Airties Taps 25-Year Telecom Exec for Board, Adds 2 New Leaders

For HR leaders, board and C-suite appointments offer a window into organizational priorities and talent strategy. Airties' decision to bring on a former CTO from a major telecom and a Cisco veteran as CBDO reflects a calculated investment in domain expertise to drive growth. This move signals a human capital strategy aligned with aggressive market expansion and partnership development.

Airties, a Paris-based provider of AI-driven connectivity software for internet service providers, has simultaneously strengthened its board of directors and executive leadership with two high-profile appointments, the company announced on July 16, 2026. Stephen Howe, former Chief Technology and Information Officer and Executive Vice President at Bell Canada, joins the board, while Michael Rezek, a long-time technology and business development executive at Cisco, steps into the newly created role of Chief Business Development Officer. The dual appointments come as Airties seeks to deepen its relationships with global broadband operators and accelerate deployment of its smart Wi-Fi solutions.

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Airties' decision to bring on a former CTO from a major telecom and a Cisco veteran as CBDO reflects a calculated investment in domain expertise to drive growth.

The appointments represent a deliberate bet on telecom DNA. Howe brings over 25 years of Canadian telecommunications experience, having recently led the rollout of Bell's fibre network across seven provinces and the expansion of its national 5G and 5G+ networks. His background spans network design, build, and operations, application development, and cloud management — all critical competencies as Airties sells into a customer base of ISPs undergoing large-scale infrastructure modernization. Rezek's tenure at Cisco, a dominant force in networking infrastructure, equips him with the partnership-building muscle that Airties needs to evolve from a technology vendor to a strategic enabler for service providers. The company’s CEO, Metin Taskin, described Howe’s addition as bringing “remarkable record of accomplishment and experience” and Rezek’s as set to “create new ways to deepen the value we deliver.”

From an industry perspective, these hires reflect a broader trend in the broadband connectivity software space. Incumbent telecoms are increasingly outsourcing the intelligence layer of their subscriber experience to AI-driven platforms like Airties, which optimize home Wi-Fi performance through real-time network orchestration. Having a board member with deep carrier-side operational credibility can accelerate procurement cycles and build trust with risk-averse CTOs at service providers. The newly created CBDO role suggests Airties is prioritizing commercial partnerships over purely organic growth, potentially eyeing co-development or white-label agreements with global telecom equipment vendors and system integrators.

Financially, the moves signal a maturing of Airties’ go-to-market strategy. The company, backed by investors including Naspers, has historically focused on product innovation. Adding a Cisco partnership veteran to the C-suite implies a push toward ecosystem development — aligning with adjacent technology providers to offer a more complete platform to ISPs. This could smooth the sales cycle and accelerate revenue growth, though the cost of these senior hires and the time required for relationship-building may moderate short-term margins.