Hoping to cash in on the boom in managed services, struggling infrastructure vendor Alcatel Lucent announced a partnership with Indian carrier Reliance Communications on Monday that will see the firms create a global joint venture.

The joint venture company intends to make a play for the fast growing $16bn managed network services industry, catering to both CDMA and GSM operators around the world.

Alcatel-Lucent will take operational control of the new entity, but there were no details released on ownership of the company, although it is believed Reliance will own a 33 per cent stake with Alcatel taking the rest.

The firm’s first contract has already been awarded, to provide managed services for Reliance’s own nationwide CDMA and GSM networks in India.

“The biggest challenge telecom operators are facing is to continuously improve competitiveness by reducing operating expenditure and enhancing network quality to provide superior customer experience,” said Sandip Biswas, head of managed networks at Reliance.