{"id":634853,"date":"2026-03-22T14:03:05","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=634853"},"modified":"2026-03-22T14:03:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:03:06","slug":"the-man-who-changed-cell-c-forever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/634853-the-man-who-changed-cell-c-forever.html","title":{"rendered":"The man who changed Cell C forever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt disrupted the South African mobile market by positioning the mobile operator as a disruptive force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is widely credited with shifting Cell C from a struggling me-too operator into an aggressive competitor to Vodacom and MTN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt started his career as a consultant at Monitor Deloitte and later held numerous executive roles in the ICT industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These roles include managing director at Orange Austria, managing director at Yahoo\u2019s wireless division, and CEO of Telefonica Mobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2009, he left Europe to take the helm at Cell C. At that stage, the mobile operator was struggling to make ends meet and was not competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was seen as the poor man\u2019s alternative to Vodacom and MTN, with an inferior network and products, and a brand which was not exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under his leadership, Cell C grew its customer base from 6.4 million subscribers to 8.9 million and significantly improved its financial performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He increased revenue to R10.2 billion and grew earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) by 75% to R1.4 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He orchestrated a famous and often controversial rebranding campaign featuring comedian Trevor Noah as the Customer Experience Officer (CEO).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This successfully changed the public perception of Cell C from a budget underdog to a modern, customer-centric challenger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt spearheaded the rollout of a 900 MHz HSPA+ network, which enabled Cell C to leapfrog competitors in mobile broadband speeds at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before he started rolling out this network, Cell C could not compete against Vodacom and MTN in the mobile broadband market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using this new network, Cell C launched aggressively priced data promotions, which started a mobile data price war in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He broke Vodacom and MTN\u2019s multi-year duopoly, where their data prices tracked each other without much choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These developments changed South Africa\u2019s telecommunications market forever, significantly lowering the cost of data for consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C got a new logo and brand refresh<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Under Reichelt, Cell C received its first brand refresh since its launch in 2001. It was one of the most successful marketing turnarounds in South African corporate history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He retired the old \u201cFor Yourself\u201d tagline and red-and-blue logo, replacing them with the famous black-and-orange \u201cC\u201d in a circle and the slogan \u201cThe Power is in Your Hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The logo featured a six-colour bar representing the South African flag, signalling a shift toward being a proudly local, inclusive brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt didn\u2019t just change a logo. He completely overhauled the company\u2019s identity to position it as a consumer champion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2010, Reichelt launched a campaign featuring comedian Trevor Noah, whose star was on the rise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It began with a video of Noah ranting about Cell C\u2019s poor service during a stand-up routine that went viral on social media, followed by full-page apology letters from Reichelt in national newspapers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt then hired Noah as the new CEO (Customer Experience Officer). While many suspected it, it was later confirmed that the whole campaign was an engineered marketing stunt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It successfully created a dialogue with customers and forced the company to be more transparent about its network flaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also controversially marketed Cell C\u2019s new HSPA+ network as 4G, which was technically inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sparked a battle with Vodacom and MTN, who accused him of misleading customers into thinking Cell C had an LTE\/4G network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt leaned into the controversy, using the media attention to further highlight Cell C\u2019s improved speeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His efforts culminated in him being named the Marketer of the Year at the 2011 AdReview Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lars Reichelt\u2019s life after Cell C<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Lars Reichelt with Ron Reddick, Cell C\u2019s CIO at the time<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt resigned with immediate effect in July 2011, citing personal reasons for stepping down as Cell C chief executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His departure was followed by several other high-level executive exits, sparking much industry speculation at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his departure from Cell C, Reichelt continued to hold leadership roles in the telecommunications and IT sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was appointed chief executive of Georgia\u2019s leading mobile operator, Magticom, in 2012, and focused on making the company more customer-focused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under his guidance, Magticom reclaimed the top position after 8 years at number two, increasing its market share from 39% to 44%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He served as Digicel FWI chief executive from July 2022 to June 2023, where he was responsible for seven Caribbean and Indian Ocean markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reichelt accelerated network improvements through a RAN-sharing agreement with Free, increasing coverage by 10%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This agreement reduced dropped calls by 15% and improved data throughput by 60%, which improved the customer experience tremendously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he serves as managing director of RA Advisors, where he helps CEOs, founders, boards, and investors with strategy and commercial transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His focus is on fibre and broadband networks and digital platforms, with a strong emphasis on European countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cell C\u2019s Trevor Noah campaign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Former Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt disrupted the South African mobile market by positioning the mobile operator as a disruptive force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":634865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,1675,42,103934,41],"class_list":["post-634853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-lars-reichelt","tag-mtn","tag-orange-austria","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634853"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":634893,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634853\/revisions\/634893"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}