FAST CONNECT

Calcutta, Aug. 24: Alcatel-Lucent, the 17.8-billion euro global telecom service provider, has assigned greater importance to its Indian operations by mandating that its Indian office will report directly to the headquarters in Paris.

Along with India, Alcatel’s Chinese operations will be directly monitored from Paris.

“This shows the importance being given to the Indian market. We all know that China and India will emerge as the largest market for mobile telephony outstripping growth in all other regions for years to come. This arrangement ensures that we report directly to the headquarters and unlike other companies are not clubbed into a larger group of geographical demarcation with no separate entity,” Vivek Mohan, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent India, said. India is among the 10 largest markets for Alcatel.

Alcatel is now charting plans to cater to companies which have recently received GSM licences. Tata Teleservices is one of the entities with whom Alcatel is negotiating an alliance.

The market is buoyant with players such as Tata Teleservices planning to invest $2 billion in the next two years, of which $1.5 billion will be utilised to roll out GSM services in six circles by the end of this fiscal.

“With so much happening in the telecom sector, this is a great time to be in India and things can only get better with 3G on its way. We have a broad range of GSM portfolio and in 3G. Third generation (3G) services will bring another big spurt to our business in the country,” Mohan said.

Alcatel is eyeing companies — both telecom and non-telecom firms — to offer hosted and managed services. It has Four Seasons and Tech Mahindra as its clients.

Managed services involve the outsourcing of functions such as IT solutions, network management, security monitoring and technical assistance.

The recently formed joint venture with Reliance Communications will help Alcatel target the domestic as well as the $16-billion international market in managed network services in telecom for both GSM and CDMA platforms.

Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel, is developing CRM (customer relationship management) solutions for the aviation industry, wireless network offerings and technologies.

Alcatel also has a 70 per cent market share of the submarine cable market in India and over a 50 per cent share of the global market.