Matteo Gatta appointed CEO of BICS, Joseph Burton to lead TeleSign

The Board of Directors of BICS (Belgacom International Carrier Services) and CEO Daniel Kurgan have come to the mutual conclusion to end their collaboration. The Board of Directors has approved the appointment of Matteo Gatta as new CEO of the company. Joseph Burton, former CEO of Poly, has been appointed as new CEO of TeleSign.

Due to different views on the company’s strategy, the Board of Directors of BICS and Daniel Kurgan, CEO since 2007, came to the mutual conclusion to end their collaboration.

Proximus and the other shareholders, MTN and Swisscom, want to explicitly thank Daniel Kurgan for his passion and dedication as CEO for almost 14 years, driving the company’s strategic transformation to become a leading international communications enabler, and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.

The board decided to appoint Matteo Gatta, currently Director Network Strategy, Innovation & Partnerships at Proximus, as CEO of BICS with immediate effect.

In his role as CEO, Matteo Gatta will accelerate BICS’ growth and diversification strategy by building the company’s global leadership in digital communications, cloud services, mobility and IoT, while reinforcing BICS’ market leadership in wholesale carrier services. He will report to the Board of Directors, presided by Guillaume Boutin.

Matteo Gatta has a University Degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pavia (Italy), a Master in Information Technology from Cefriel - Polytechnic of Milan and holds an Executive Master in Finance at Solvay Business School (ULB, Brussels).

Matteo joined the Carrier division of the Proximus Group in 2002 after having held various product management positions in Italy and in the UK, especially in mobile and internet access services and software development. He can rely on an impressive track record, having built his career in product management, strategy and innovation while also driving M&A files and partnerships.

He has acquired an intensive group-wide expertise over the years, within BICS and Proximus and also as CEO of Scarlet (2008-2011). Over the last years, he has played a crucial role in the definition of Proximus’ long-term technological and business strategy, innovation and partnerships, more particularly in the 5G and Fiber domains. Matteo was already a Board member of BICS, but also of Proximus Luxembourg (Tango – Telindus) and Tessares, as well as founding director of LoRa Alliance (IoT).

The board of BICS also appointed Joseph Burton as the new CEO of TeleSign, effective January 25th. TeleSign is the USA based subsidiary of BICS, specialized in programmable communications and digital identity services to internet companies, digital champions and cloud native businesses.

TeleSign has leveraged its extensive software expertise, combined with complementary BICS assets, to carve out a unique position in the digital marketplace, resulting in impressive double-digit growth since being acquired by BICS.

Joseph Burton served as CEO of Plantronics (now Poly) from 2016 to 2020, after joining the company in 2011 as Chief Technical officer, and then Chief Commercial Officer. He started his career in 1990 as a software engineer, was acquired into Cisco in 2001 and served as Cisco's CTO for Unified Communications until 2010.

Joseph is specialized in digital transformation, growth acceleration, corporate strategy, go-to-market and blends expertise in software and hardware product development. He currently operates as senior advisor to the management consulting company McKinsey. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems and completed the Stanford Executive program at Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA).

In his role as CEO, Joseph Burton will further reinforce TeleSign’s leading position in programmable communications and digital identity solutions. He will report directly to Guillaume Boutin who will take on the function of Chairman of the Board of TeleSign.