Alcatel Lucent NZ CEO Steve Lowe has resigned and hisreplacement Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre is set to take over the role as head of NewZealand operations in two weeks.

In a media statement the company says Lowe (pictured) “has decided to leavethe company”. When contacted by TelecommunicationsReview Lowe, who began the role in 2008, says it is a personal decision, and that he has no plans for hisnext move. He denied the decision to leave had anything to do with the outages thathave plagued Telecom’s XT network, which Alcatel Lucent built and largelymaintains. He didn’t wish to comment further on his departure and referred TR to company spokespeople.

Mahurkar-Thombre takes over on Monday 8 March and will reportdirectly to Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Alcatel-Lucent Asia Pacificregion. A spokesperson told TR thathe is the only company representative able to officially comment on the changein New Zealand leadership, however it’s understood he is currently in transitfrom Paris to Beijing.

In the meantime the statement provides some background onMahurkar-Thrombre, a former general manager of Alcatel Lucent’s Next GenerationNetworks product unit and vice president of Bell Labs. She has a Master ofScience degree in engineering management, with a certificate intelecommunications, from Northwestern University in 2000.

“Jyoti has more than 20 years telecommunications industry experience,and has driven next generation network rollouts for many of the largest andmost progressive operators in the Asia Pacific region and around the world,”said Rajeev Singh-Molares. “She understands our customers’ priorities and weare looking forward to her personal contribution to serving our New Zealandcustomers.”

Last weekSingh-Molares apologised for the XT Network outages in a statement issued byTelecom CEO Paul Reynolds: “Resolvingthe XT Network problems in New Zealand is the single most important operationalmatter in the world for Alcatel-Lucent right now, our entire Executive andSenior Engineering team, including Global Chief Executive Ben Verwaayen areinvolved.

“Weapologise to the customers of Telecom New Zealand. The full resources of ourglobal business are available to address these problems – we will do whateverit takes.”