- Vittal to steer GSMA through 5G, AI and Open Gateway expansion
- Brings decades of telecom and consumer business experience to the role
What happened: Gopal Vittal named chair of GSMA board until 2026
The GSMA Board of Directors has officially appointed Gopal Vittal as the new Chair of the organisation, marking a significant leadership change in the global mobile industry. Vittal, currently the Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Bharti Airtel, succeeds his interim role as Acting Chair and will serve until the end of 2026.
Vittal’s association with the GSMA spans eight years, including his tenure as Deputy Chair since 2023. His elevation comes at a pivotal time for the GSMA as it leads the industry through technological transitions, including the full deployment of 5G Standalone networks, advancing AI integration, and scaling the GSMA Open Gateway — a global initiative using open network APIs to foster innovation and revenue diversification.
The Open Gateway initiative, with operator participation covering nearly 80% of global mobile connections, underscores the strategic direction that Vittal will now spearhead. In his statement, he emphasised the industry’s $6.5 trillion contribution to the global economy in 2024 and the GSMA’s vital role in enabling innovation.
Vittal’s leadership track record includes transformative work at Bharti Airtel, where he oversaw a fivefold increase in market capitalisation, strengthened digital capabilities, and cultivated a customer-centric, resilient organisational culture. He also spent over two decades at Hindustan Unilever, driving a significant turnaround in its Home and Personal Care segment.
GSMA Director General Mats Granryd welcomed the appointment, citing Vittal’s extensive experience and leadership qualities as essential to navigating current challenges and opportunities. The announcement of a new Deputy Chair is expected in due course.
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Why it’s important
Gopal Vittal’s appointment comes at a critical juncture for the mobile industry. The GSMA plays a key role in aligning mobile network operators and ecosystem players globally, and Vittal’s role as Chair will directly influence the pace and direction of global 5G Standalone deployments. This next phase of 5G aims to unlock lower latency, higher speeds, and better network slicing capabilities for enterprises.
In addition, the GSMA Open Gateway initiative — now representing operators covering 80% of mobile connections — is a strategic shift toward an API-centric future. This shift facilitates cross-industry collaboration, enabling developers to access telco capabilities like quality on demand and SIM swap verification through standardised APIs. Vittal’s experience in both telecom operations and consumer business transformation is seen as highly relevant for driving this next phase.
Furthermore, with AI being embedded into network operations, customer service, and fraud detection, the Chair’s role becomes instrumental in shaping best practices and standards that can support scalability and ethical usage. Vittal’s dual background — in telecom and consumer goods — provides insight into both infrastructure and experience layers of digital transformation.
This leadership change reinforces GSMA’s commitment to industry-wide progress, positioning the organisation to manage technological disruptions, regulatory expectations, and the shift to new monetisation models in a dynamic digital economy.
