Alcatel-Lucent NZ boss abruptly quits
Alcatel-Lucent New Zealand chief executive Steve Lowe has resigned, the company announced in a statement this afternoon.
No reason is given for Mr Lowe leaving the company, which has around 700 local staff.
Alcatel-Lucent is Telecom’s longtime network partner and the builder of its troubled XT network.
In the absence of official commentary, Twitter wags were quick to fill the gap, with one posting "Alcatel-Lucent boss suddenly stops working, with no explanation - much like XT".
Speculation was rife that Mr Lowe was carrying the can for recent XT problems. But, equally, he could be refusing to carry the can. Or heading off to join another company, or play golf or volunteer for the Foreign Legion.
Mr Lowe is a qualified engineer who worked for IBM, Tranz Rail and NZ Post before talking the top job at Alcatel-Lucent NZ.
From outward appearances, Mr Lowe’s departure seems to be abrupt.
Rumours of the chief executive's exit began to swirl Friday morning.
When Alcatel-Lucent’s HR department declined comment, and Mr Lowe’s office did not return calls all day, NBR contacted a senior Telecom executive.
The Telecom executive said that if Mr Lowe was leaving, Telecom would expect to be informed in advance.
As of late Friday afternoon, the executive spoken to by NBR had not been.
Mr Lowe will be replaced on March 8 by Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre, who will report to Rajeev Singh-Molares, president of Alcatel-Lucent in the Asia Pacific region. Ms Mahurkar-Thombre’s title is given as “head of business”.
Her LinkedIn account gives her current workplace as Chicago.
Last week, Telecom announced that UK consultancy Analysys Mason - last seen in this part of the world advising Vodafone on its bid to head of MTR regulation - would carry out its independent review of XT.
In its statement, Alcatel-Lucent said Mr Lowe and Ms Mahurkar-Thombre will work together during a multi-week transition - a period that will coincide with the Analysys review.
A spokesman for Alcatel-Lucent NZ referred all questions to the Asia-Pacific head Mr Singh-Molares, who was currently in transit to New Zealand and unavailable for comment.
Ms Mahurkar-Thombre was formerly the general manager of Alcatel-Lucent’s Next Generation Networks product unit. Prior to this role, Jyoti was vice president of Bell Labs, where she managed projects from initial concept to product release. Jyoti joined the company in 1988 where she held a variety of product management and research and development positions.
Mr Lowe, and his predecessor Andrew Fairgray, were both veterans of the NZ telecommunications scene.
Alcatel-Lucent was formed in 2006 by the merger of France’s Alcatel with AT&T spin-off Lucent Technologies, which included Bell Labs.
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Comments and questions28
much of the blogging about telecom is from disgruntled employees who have had ample opportunity to observe and adapt or die. they whinge on about the inadaquacy of Telecom and pick on it like a fat kid with no mates. the reality is that it is a private company that is scrutined to death, and compared to most countries in the world they do a pretty good job. its become a part of the NZ psychy to bash the countrys biggest business. the media love to beat it up. Is it a Hard Arsed organisation yes it is does it get it right more often than not yes, is it worse that BT or Telstra or Singtel or Verizon, nope it isnt. if the company was as bad as the media reported why does it have any mobile phone business at all? the government mandated that it couldnt have GSM.. go figure !
Sure, he built the thing, but presumably Telecom signed off on the design and the capability.
So when will someone from Telecom front up as well?
Nokia or Ericsson!!
... you believe any member of Telecom's world class management will take any responsibility for this - probably because someone Very High Up ordered that the network be built for three tenths of f all .....
"The next person on the design team that uses the word 'redundancy' will get first hand experience of it. Now sod off and get the bloody thing finished before Hammond gets out of make up."
Could u Please be explaining waht is is the probelem with
your network card , that is disconneected from de hardware
So that i can inform u of the network adaptor than is very strange
to the whole system respsonse of the ip adrress you are givinf me
Customer %^&%^&*^*(&*(&*)*(* you !!!!
Thought this was of interest
I agree, Telecom has to sign it off.
Also, we all know the first company to deploy new technology gets hit with a huge bill and all the problems. May be NZ isn't big enough to be the first...
you are the one who sounds like a member of current telecom management
WCDMA isn't new technology - it's been around in commercial form for more than eight years. The japanese were field trialling it in the late 90's. Sorry buddy Telecom NZ is a laggard in this respect.
At the time Telecom had to sell their purchased GSM spectrum to Bell South they were already severely invested in US spec Ericsson base station equipment. This was even prior to them rolling out DAMPS. To suggest Telecom would have seriously considered a fledgling GSM over the established analog AMPS system is laughable. Later when Telecom were rollingout their 027 CDMA network I asked why they didnt adopt GSM. At the time I was told that Telecom preferred to lead the way with technology, instead of being a follower.
The only people who will XiT from telecom will be customers....for a while.
I wonder if the same problems were experienced elsewhere in the world......Think a number of corners were cut here and someone somewhere along the line knew and still went with it.
and you will get 821,000 hits - hmm that's two hits for every XT customer.
I may be a rich dwarf but I do NOT not wear make up!
PS That free mobile phone you gave me is total crap.
Did the CEO have any mates at Alcatel when the decision was made to buy the system?
I wonder if The Enquiry will look into this aspect.
Good to hear from you. Pse give telecom back your appearance fees so they can fund repairs to XT (and pay more bonuses to Mr Reynolds).
did you catch up with the latest XT outage from Taupo down NZ tonight you management lackey?
Bloggus epitomises the very nasty and cerebally challenged culture that prevails in TNZ. World-class Company? Absolute bollacks!
Can't do anything right. If this was the public sector heads would have rolled by now.
There were 3 potential bidders for the TNZ XT network, Ericsson, NSN and ALU. Ericsson had 26 customer references NSN had 8 and ALU had 3. So TNZ pick ALU - go figure.
This is the disaster those who are in the industry were expecting just surprised it took so long.
Telecom would have had a budget and a requirement. Alcatel-Lucent would have had hardware, software and people. Together they would have designed a solution they felt would be up to the job. There would certainly have been compromises and perhaps a few crossed-fingers with respect to risks taken to maximise return through lower cost.
In the end, it looks like they built a network lacking the diversity and redundancy it needed to be reliable.
Whose "fault" that is only the insiders know...and their fingers are, I'm sure, pointing at the other guy.
I assume then that Steve Lowe is responsible for the second rate ALU technology, I thought that was an R&D issue?
Excuse me but my XT appearance fees are a private matter. Needless to say I made use of that shipping container we used in the adverts to load up my piles of cash you ever so kindly gave me. I hear Clarkson and and May gave me some stick at the showgrounds. I would have called them live on the show but that free mobile phone you gave me didn't work did it!
Well I presume telecom hired Alcatel to build a mobile network based on best global practice and trusted them to come up with a design that meets the needs of New Zealand.
So far Telecom have fronted up and have taken the fall out from the XT issues, they have not played the blame game with Alcatel.
I have connections in VFNZ. These guys were expecting the XT system to crash & burn...ALU is (apparently) experieced in satellite networks, rather than the hard-wired variety, and they've only done ONE of these in the past. (Makes me squirm everytime I pick up my ALcatel desk phone!).
Still, VFNZ found itself STILL being undercut by TNZ (as usual), which also made some extremely extravagant promises to business customers as they introduced XT.
Who's laughing now, huh?
Alcatel like the other bidders would have quoted to meet Telecom's spec. Telecom's world class management team would then have screwed all the vendors down so much that big compromises would have been made, capacity and redundancy cut out and the reliability of the whole network severely compromised. This is because they are tough macho negotiators. World class management congratulate themselves on a job well done, Dr Paul awards everyone a huge bonus. Board awards Dr Paul a huge bonus and its champagne all round. A big company like Alcatel with legions of lawyers back at HQ would have got plenty of disclaimers in the contract around warranties etc in the light of the short sighted approach to network design taken by our world class, bonus-hungry Telecom guys. This might explain why TEL aren't pointing fingers.
Come on Paul, time to resign! You have taken the money to do the job, and you have failed. Be the bigger man!
And pigs will fly........
Anyone know his email address?
wags mentioned...must be yet another chris keall article?
looks like chris keall loves wags more than john terry
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