John Legere

Early life and education

A Massachusetts native, Legere graduated from St. Bernard's Central Catholic School in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and aspired to be a gym teacher, before he figured out he wanted a more lucrative career and decided to study business instead. He received a BBA from the University of Massachusetts, an M.S., as an Alfred P. Sloan fellow, at the MIT Sloan School of Management and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University. He also completed Harvard Business School's Program for Management Development (PMD).

Career

Legere was appointed CEO of T-Mobile USA (now T-Mobile US) in September 2012, and has since been noted for T-Mobile's "Un-carrier" approach to contract-free wireless networks.

He first worked in telecommunications at New England Telephone. Legere then spent nearly twenty years at AT&T, where he spent a period working under Daniel Hesse, formerly CEO of Sprint Corporation. He served as chief executive for AT&T Asia from April 1994 to November 1997, and also spent time as head of AT&T Global Strategy and Business Development. From 1997 to 1998, he served as President of the worldwide outsourcing subsidiary of AT&T, AT&T Solutions.

Legere then worked as senior vice president of Dell and president and chief operations officer for Dell's Operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and president, Asia-Pacific for Dell from 1998 to February 2000. Prior to joining T-Mobile, he was CEO of Asia Global Crossing from February 2000 to January 2002, and CEO of Global Crossing from October 2001 to October 2011 where he led the organization through bankruptcy and eventually an acquisition by Level 3 Communications. His leadership at Global Crossing was not without controversy.

He serves on the CTIA board of directors and has been a director of the CTIA wireless internet caucus, since October 2012. He served as a director of Global Crossing, from October 2001 to December 2003, and Sanrise Group and Asia Global Crossing, from April 2000 to March 2002. He has also served as a director of ON Semiconductor.

Net neutrality views

BingeOn, a service which throttles bandwidth but allows for fair-use streaming (the total monthly data limit is 30 GB), does not apply this limit to other corporations which have agreements with T-Mobile, prompting outcry from the EFF and Net Neutrality advocates. Legere responded by posting what is described by Gizmodo as a "curse filled hate rant against the EFF" Wired Magazine analyzed BingeOn and found the following: "T-Mobile has insisted that it “optimizes” videos for Binge On customers, but the EFF found that T-Mobile is actually downgrading all connections to video sites, including those that aren’t Binge On partners. As a result, users are typically served 480p versions of nearly all videos, since sites like YouTube and Netflix will automatically route customers with slow connections to the lower quality stream.

Personal life

Legere was a nationally competitive runner in college and post college, and still competes in events with fellow employees. In 2004, he completed the Boston Marathon as a member of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Marathon Challenge team. In May 2016 in support of competitive running, he purchased ad space on Nick Symmonds's shoulder for T-Mobile.

He has been a member of the corporate advisory board of the School of Business and Management, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the government relations committee of the American Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong.

Legere has been divorced twice and has two daughters.