T-Mobile Bringing on Former AT&T Exec Chris Sambar
Mike Katz is leaving the company after 28 years
WASHINGTON, July 8, 2026 – Longtime T-Mobile executive Mike Katz has left the company, the wireless carrier announced Tuesday.
Katz, the chief business and product officer, left the role to “pursue new professional interests” and will stay on as an advisor through December 2026, the company said in a release. He had been with T-Mobile for more than 28 years.
The carrier also appointed Chris Sambar as its chief enterprise officer, a change it said would take effect by Oct. 14, 2026. Sambar is currently the COO of Public Storage, but previously spent more than 22 years at AT&T before leaving in 2024.
Sambar led AT&T’s enterprise division and oversaw the design and deployment of its FirstNet public safety network. At T-Mobile, he’ll similarly head the carrier’s small business, enterprise, and government units and “help scale emerging growth opportunities” like ad tech and robotics.
Sambar will report to CEO Srini Gopalan, who took the post in November but had been with Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile’s parent company, for more than 8 years.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Public Storage said Sambar was leaving the company at the end of July.
T-Mobile also said André Almeida, its chief broadband, enterprise, and emerging business officer was being given an expanded role to oversee the carrier’s consumer wireless and broadband businesses along with COO Jon Freier.
“With these appointments, I am confident T‑Mobile’s leadership team has the speed, focus and expertise to shape the next generation of our industry as we continue to innovate and disrupt with a truly differentiated offering for our customers,” Gopalan said in a statement.
T-Mobile also said Tuesday its engineering, IT, and cybersecurity units would be combined under CTO John Saw.
T-Mobile didn’t mention its direct-to-device satellite partnership with SpaceX (the exclusivity of that deal is expected to expire this month), but Sambar was briefly a board member of fellow D2D operator AST SpaceMobile after his stint at AT&T.
AST has a partnership with AT&T and tested services with FirstNet during Sambar’s tenure, which he touted frequently on his LinkedIn.
