Alcatel lucent India President and Managing Director Munish Seth has been replaced by Srini Sundarajan and old veteran at the company with immediate effect. Seth has been said to have resigned, however, industry sources otherwise and point out to some other differences between him and the company headquarters.
“Seth's replacement was forthcoming as the company's higher- ups were not satisfied with his performance,” highly placed sources in the telecom circles told The Pioneer.
In fact, sources say that Seth's decisions comes at time when the Paris-based parent company has been questioning the performance of the Indian unit, which is faced with rising competition from European and Chinese rivals such as Huawei.
The international telecom company, which is a major R&D giant and was in a tie-up with major Indian PSUs including the DoT and private companies is also a major player in the telecom equipment and infrastructure business.
Sundararajan has been heading the R&D function at the Alcatel lucent India's unit out of Bangalore. He is also said to have worked across technology domains, including wireless, fixed access and business systems.
The developments are said to have come at a time when the French telecom equipment maker is refocussing on IP and ultra-high speed broadband access, refinancing debt and taking steps to contain its debt load to turn profitable next year. Alcatel has a worldwide presence in 130 countries. Alcatel-lucent was formed when Alcatel merged with lucent Technologies on December 1, 2006.
In India, Alcatel lucent has been present since 1982 with its partnership with ITI. Alcatel-lucent was the first company to manufacture Digital Switching Equipment in India. Since then, as a leader in mobile, fixed, IP and optics technologies, and a pioneer in applications and services and has offered complete solutions to help Indian service providers and customers realize the potential of a connected world. The company claims that currently, half of India's fixed and CDMA wireless lines are powered by Alcatel-lucent technology.