Orange loses chief exec

France Telecom said Thursday that Sanjiv Ahuja, the head of its international and domestic mobile operation, Orange, is to step down.

Ahuja has been chief executive of the mobile arm since 2004 and will be replaced by Olaf Swantee, presently senior vice president of Hewlett-Packard. The former CEO will maintain links with Orange as chairman of Orange UK and as an advisor to the group’s chairman and CEO Didier Lombard.

France Telecom said it will also become a partner in one of Ahuja’s new ventures which will target emerging markets.

The carrier on Thursday posted a 1.8 per cent year on year increase in revenues, reaching Eur12.84bn in the first quarter.

Revenues for the Personal Communication Services division climbed 4.5 per cent year on year to Eur6.9bn as the operator’s number of customers excluding MVNOs reached 100 million. 3G subscribers (EDGE and UMTS) more than tripled to 7.24 million since the first quarter of last year, after 1.5 million net adds in the first three months of 2007.

Revenues in the Home Communication Services were almost flat at Eur5.57bn, with the operator recording 10.2 million broadband users and 4.5 million Livebox deployments.

Meanwhile, Enterprise Communication Services sales fell 2 per cent to Eur1.89bn, mainly linked to the downward trend in the volume of traditional telephone communications.