Alcatel-Lucent and Airtel appoint CEO for their joint venture

Bangalore: Alcatel-Lucent and Bharti Airtel, providers of integrated telecom services has announced the appointment of Arnaud Soubelet as the CEO of their joint venture Alcatel-Lucent Network Management Services India (ALNMSI). "I am delighted to be part of Alcatel-Lucent Network Managed Services India. This joint venture is a landmark being the first managed services operations for fixed networks in India," said Soubelet. The joint venture will manage Bharti Airtel's pan India wireline broadband and telephone services. It will also support their transition to next generation networks (NGN) to offer services like high-speed internet, triple play, media-rich value-added services, MPLS, virtual private networks (VPN) for both retail and business customers of Airtel. The new entity which began pan India operations on August 1 with 4,000 employees, is headquartered in NCR (National Capital Region). "This is a great step towards transforming Bharti Airtel's network to next generation IP technology while improving the quality of service. By driving service for Bharti Airtel's customers, we are looking to establish the new joint venture as the reference for wireline managed services and IP transformation," said Soubelet. Holding post graduate degrees in business administration and business law from the Sorbonne University in Paris, Soubelet began his career with Alcatel-Lucent in 1988. Over the last 20 years, he has held several assignments in France, Latin America, Greece, Egypt and India across sales, enterprises and managed services.