Robi Axiata brought in Telenor veteran Varinder Paul Singla (pictured) as CIO of the second-largest mobile operator in Bangladesh by mobile connection figures at end-March.

In a statement, Robi noted Singla brings 21 years of telecoms experience, most recently as head of IT at True Corp, which merged with dtac in early March.

Before dtac, he managed IT at Telenor Myanmar.

In addition to 14 years at Telenor, Singla also worked for IBM, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communication and Bharti Airtel.

GSMA Intelligence showed Robi ended March with 55.6 million mobile connections, behind market leader Grameenphone on 80.1 million.

In the year to end-March, Robi’s LTE connections grew 24.2 per cent to 30.8 million, with average monthly data usage up 34.6 per cent to 6.4GB.