Levendos named Crown Castle’s COO

10 November 2020 | Natalie Bannerman

Crown Castle International (Crown Castle) has appointed Chris Levendos to lead its small cells and fibre solutions activities as executive vice president and chief operating officer – fibre.

Effective as of 1 December 2020, Levendos will succeed James Young, Crown Castle’s current executive vice president and chief operating officer – fibre, who is retiring from Crown Castle but will remain with the company through February 2021 in order to assist with the transition process.

“Chris brings significant operational and organizational leadership experience that will be instrumental as we continue to grow our industry leading small cells and fibre business to support our customers’ 5G network deployments,” said Jay Brown, chief executive officer of Crown Castle.

“We believe our ability to offer towers, small cells and fibre solutions, which are all integral components of communications networks and are shared among multiple tenants, provides us the best opportunity to generate significant growth while delivering high returns for our shareholders.”

Levendos joined Crown Castle in 2018 and currently serves as vice president of network engineering and operations, responsible for the company’s national fiber and small cell infrastructure network.

With more than 30 years of experience operating and leading large fiber network organisations, prior to his time at Crown Castle, he also served as executive vice president of field operations for Frontier Communications Corporation as well as leading network deployment and operations as an executive of Google Fiber, a subsidiary of Alphabet .

Before this, Levendos spent most of his career at Verizon Communications in a variety of operating roles within the company’s wireline division.