Bell (pictured) spent eight years at Telstra, concluding with nearly three years as the Australian group’s director of business-to-business digital transformation.
During his time with the group he also spent two and a half years as COO of Telkomtelstra, a joint venture with fixed-line operator Telkom Indonesia that focuses on business services.
M1 has not officially announced Bell’s appointment, which dates from the start of August, but his role now appears in the company’s list of senior management.
His role, according to his LinkedIn profile, is “leading M1’s business transformation, across digital, product and systems”. He has worked in Singapore before, for Telstra. In 2013 he told Capacity: “Working in a growing business means there is a lot going on every day. But this is what makes the job exciting as every day brings new challenges.”
Five years ago, when Bell was director of marketing, portfolio and pricing at Telstra Global Enterprise and Services, he launched the company’s cloud-based enterprise service, Whispir Conversation Platform, into the UK. “This is just one of many cloud-based applications now integrated into our global network and available on-demand, enabling customers to respond quickly to changing business priorities and better anticipate challenges ahead,” he said at the time.
In Singapore, M1 competes with Singtel and Starhub, with TPG Telecom likely to emerge into the market shortly.
Earlier in his career Bell spent two years at KPNQwest, a joint venture between the Netherlands operator and Qwest, an ancestor of CenturyLink that failed in the dotcom crash, and then seven and a half years at BT Global Services.
