Could it be Adlan Tajuddin to replace Izaddin?

The surprise resignation of Izaddin Idris as Axiata Group CEO was initially speculated to be linked to Tune Talk's lawsuit against the transfer of Celcom interest in the MVNO to any merged entity of Celcom-Digi. [Read ABITW here.] 

It was then speculated to be due to Izaddin's resistance to Government's DNB plan and aligning Celcom Axiata with the U Mobile cartel led by Vincent Tan. 

Khazanah is looking for possible successor to Izaddin and it should be one that will not resist the government's DNB plan for the 5G rollout. Rocky Bru here mentioned former Celcom CEO, Shazally Ramli and current CEO Idham Nawawi as possible choices. Adlan Tajuddin is another possible name left out. 

Adlan was appointed edetco group CEO in November 2020 following the sudden resignation of Suresh Siddhu. His experience in leading edetco would be useful for Celcom to play a prominent role in the development of 5G infrastructure with DNB.   

According to edetco website here, Adlan has been with Celcom for good many years:

Previously, he has served as the Chief Financial Officer and Director of PT XL Axiata Tbk (Indonesia). Having been with the Axiata Group for 17 years since he joined Celcom in 2003 as Vice President, Finance, Adlan rose rapidly within Celcom. In his early career, he also worked with Arthur Andersen & Co in Assurance and Business Advisory for 9 years.

An extract of edetco operation from the website here, is as below:

Established in 2012, edotco Group is the first regional integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company in Asia, providing end-to-end solutions in the tower services sector from tower leasing, co-locations, build-to-suit, energy, transmission and operations and maintenance (O&M).

edotco Group operates and manages a regional portfolio of over 32,800 towers across core markets of Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Philippines and Laos with 21,067 towers directly operated by edotco and a further 11,749 towers managed through a range of services provided. edotco strives to deliver outstanding performance in telecommunications infrastructure services and solutions. Its state- of-the-art real-time monitoring service, echo, has driven significant improvements in field operations while maximising operational efficiencies in terms of battery, energy, and fuel consumption for telecommunications infrastructure.

edotco Group was awarded the Frost & Sullivan 2020 Asia Pacific Telecoms Tower Company of the Year Award for its demonstrated exemplary business growth and performance in Southeast Asia.

edetco will feature prominently and stand to benefit from the DNB rollout plan expected to be worth RM20 billion over 10 year as reported by NST in November 2021. The figure could be lower at RM16.5 billion should major telco are willing to collaborate and make the cost beneficial to users. 

DNB has no retail ambition but should telco like Maxis and government-controlled Celcom Axiata refused to be involved, they could invite foreign partner with strong financial backing and eventually bite into their retail market using the added advantage of 5G albeit competitively priced.

It is puzzling for Celcom to be part of U Mobile plan for dual network and aligning with its arch competitor Maxis. Several reasons were mentioned for Celcom to leave the sunset Maxis. If not, uncooperative telco would eventually weed themselves out. [Read ABITW here] 

[ABITW could also be accessed via proxy website CroxyProxy here]