Indian-American executive Srini Gopalan has been appointed chief executive officer of telecom operator T-Mobile, amid ongoing debates over H-1B visa policies.
Photograph: Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Gopalan’s appointment, effective from November 1, 2025, comes as US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation imposing a staggering $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas, triggering widespread panic, concern and fear among Indian professionals on work visa.
Gopalan, currently the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of T-Mobile, will succeed Mike Sievert, who has led the telecom operator since 2020.
Born in Delhi, Gopalan attended Delhi Public School and St. Stephen’s College before earning an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in 1992.
He has held leadership roles at Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Capital One, and Accenture, including CEO of Deutsche Telekom’s German operations.
He joined T-Mobile in early 2025 as the COO.
Industry analysts say Gopalan’s appointment reflects T-Mobile’s multi-year succession planning and underscores the significant contributions of Indian-origin executives in the US corporate landscape.
Last Friday, Trump signed the proclamation ‘restriction on entry of certain nonimmigrant workers’, saying the abuse of the H-1B visa programme is a “national security threat”, a decision that came as a rude shock to Indian and American technology companies and also caused uncertainty to foreign professionals, especially in the Information Technology (IT) sector.
Indians make up an estimated 71 per cent of all approved H-1B applications in recent years, according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
China is the next biggest group.
The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.
Technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
