Bharti Airtel, Alcatel-Lucent in managed services JV for broadband and telephone services

PARIS, FRANCE & NEW DELHI, INDIA: Bharti Airtel, Asia’s leading integrated telecom service provider, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) today announced that they have formed a joint venture to manage Bharti Airtel’s pan-India broadband and telephone services and help Airtel’s transition to next generation networks.

Under the joint venture, Alcatel-Lucent will design, plan, deploy, optimize and manage Bharti Airtel’s broadband and telephone network across India. A new legal entity is being formed which will be operated by Alcatel-Lucent.

Manoj Kohli, CEO & Joint Managing Director, Bharti Airtel said: “This joint venture is another step towards Bharti Airtel’s vision to continuously redefine and deliver the benchmarks of customer experience. We will leverage Alcatel-Lucent’s global expertise in IP transformation and network management while allowing us to focus on customer delivery and market growth. It will also help us accelerate performances as we migrate to next generation networks for our broadband and telephone customers, opening the door to advanced services and applications.”

“We appreciate the opportunity that Bharti Airtel has given us to demonstrate our worldwide expertise in network transformation, managed network services and IP transformation”, said Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent. “The expansion of our relationship is drawn on our strengths as a global services player, ready to partner with innovative customers in their business transformation plans,” he added.

This managed services partnership will include all end-to-end activities -- service rollout, installation and fault repair, service continuity and transformation. It will support Bharti Airtel’s transformation to next generation networks, offering advanced services like high-speed internet, triple play, media-rich VAS, MPLS, VPN for both retail and business customers. The partnership will also drive optimal capital investment and increase operational efficiency by moving voice and data traffic onto a single, 'packetized' infrastructure.