Telenet CEO John Porter is stepping down after 13 years running Belgium's largest cable operator, with Rocío Lorenzo taking the reins on 2 November 2026.

Porter will advise Telenet until the end of the year and stay on as chairman of Wyre. His departure lands as the operator folds into Ziggo Group, the Benelux combination Liberty Global assembled after paying €1bn to take full ownership of Dutch joint venture VodafoneZiggo.

Who is leaving — and why now?

Porter's telecom career runs long. He joined Liberty Global in 1994, helped build Australian pay-TV operator Austar and ran it as CEO from 1999. After Foxtel bought Austar in 2012, he moved to Belgium to lead Telenet.

He framed the exit as a matter of timing and geography. "As Telenet begins a new chapter as part of Ziggo Group, I feel the time is right to spend more time with my family in Australia," Porter said. "It has been a privilege to lead Telenet and work alongside talented colleagues who have helped transform the company while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit that has always defined us."

Thirteen years is a long stretch for a cable chief, and he's leaving on his own terms. Rare enough in this industry.

Who is Rocío Lorenzo?

Lorenzo currently leads Cable & Wireless Panama and serves as Senior Vice President at Liberty Latin America. She brings more than 20 years in telecoms and technology, including a stint at Boston Consulting Group — where, in a tidy historical footnote, she worked with Porter on Telenet's acquisition of BASE in 2016.

She'll report to Ziggo Group CEO Stephen van Rooyen, which tells you where decision-making now sits in the enlarged group.

Her own statement leaned on the familiar vendor-adjacent vocabulary: innovation, opportunity, value. "I couldn't be more excited about the opportunity to lead Telenet and work alongside such a talented team within the broader Liberty footprint," Lorenzo said. "This is a company at the leading edge of innovation, with a tremendous opportunity to build on the strong foundation already in place and bring faster, better, and more reliable connectivity to even more people."

The substance, stripped of adjectives: she inherits a Belgian cable incumbent being integrated into a transnational group, and her mandate is execution.

What did Liberty Global's chief say?

Mike Fries, Chairman and CEO of Liberty Global, praised Porter as "a tremendous leader at Liberty Global and a great friend for more than three decades." He credited Porter with bringing "that rare combination of entrepreneurial drive and operational excellence" to both Austar and Telenet, and said Porter "leaves Telenet a strong digital-first business that is exceptionally well positioned for its future as part of Ziggo Group."

On the incoming chief, Fries was equally warm. "Rocío brings deep telecoms expertise, hands-on leadership and a track record of turning strategy into results," he said. "She is ideally placed to lead Telenet into its next chapter."

What happens next?

The transition runs on a slow clock. Porter advises until year-end; Lorenzo starts 2 November 2026 under van Rooyen. Between those dates sits the real work — merging Telenet's Belgian operations into Ziggo Group's structure without denting the entrepreneurial culture Porter says he preserved. That integration, not the handover, will define her first year.