The New Zealand business head of Alcatel-Lucent, the company responsible for installing Telecom's troubled XT mobile phone network, has taken the fall for the ongoing network problems.
Alcatel-Lucent issued a statement yesterday saying Steve Lowe had decided to leave the company, being replaced by Jyoti Mahurkar-Thombre as head of its New Zealand operations.
The appointment takes effect on March 8.
Industry sources said the timing of Mr Lowe's departure should be regarded as "significant".
The XT failure was a critical issue for Alcatel-Lucent and was demanding the attention of staff from chief executive Ben Verwaayen down.
Concern about the XT failures had been telescoped downwards and decisions had been taken around personnel appointments, the sources said.
The Otago Daily Times was asked to email its questions about Mr Lowe's departure and how Ms Mahurkar-Thombre would ensure Telecom's XT network problems would be resolved to the Asia-Pacific region president Rajeev Singh-Molares.
Mr Singh-Molares was in transit through Asia and could not be reached by phone.
He was the only person who could comment, a spokesman said.
Mr Singh-Molares last week said that resolving the XT network problems in New Zealand was the single most important operational matter in the world for Alcatel-Lucent.
"Our entire executive and senior engineering team, including global chief executive Ben Verwaayen, are involved."
Ms Mahurkar-Thombre had more than 20 years of telecommunications industry experience and had driven the next generation network rollouts for many of the largest and most progressive operators in the Asia Pacific region around the world, the company statement said.
In May last year, Alcatel-Lucent said the launch of the XT network was the latest milestone in a successful partnership between it and Telecom.
The XT network crashed last month, leaving customers below Taupo unable to use XT phones for up to three days.
The failure is subject to an independent review.
The latest XT problems started late last month with thousands of Otago and Southland users frustrated as services remained interrupted for days.
It was the second network failure in six weeks.
Telecom chief executive Paul Reynolds came to Dunedin to announce a $5 million compensation package to customers for the mobile network failure.
Problems remained ongoing in the South well after North Island XT users had full coverage.
