A new chief executive officer will be stepping in at local telecommunications firm Pacific LightNet, while the president will be stepping down.

Jeremy Amen will assume the role of CEO at Pacific LightNet beginning Aug. 3, a position that has been vacant since October 2007. Pacific LightNet's president, Pat Bustamante, meanwhile, is resigning from his position after more than six years of service.

“;I have greatly enjoyed my time at Pacific LightNet and know that the company will continue to grow and offer the latest voice and data services for years to come,”; said Bustamante in a press release.

Amen comes to Pacific LightNet after a successful tenure at British Telecom, where he served in various senior management positions since 2005. Most recently, Amen led the organization responsible for customer service operations in the Americas for BT's international customers.

Prior to BT, Amen worked at Infonet Services Corp., a global managed data services company, which was acquired by BT in February 2005.

Amen holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard, a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an M.B.A. from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Pacific LightNet Chief Financial Officer Tim Sansom said Bustamante's tenure was marked by a pronounced expansion of the company's network, which included the implementation of new soft-switch technology, as well as a series of related product launches using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), including 808NetFone and the Hosted PBX service.

Pacific LightNet, founded in 2001, owns a fiber-optic system linking the six major Hawaiian islands. It currently has about 7,000 customers.