Nortel has announced further details of its new Global Operations Center of Excellence in Turkey. Located on the R&D campus of Nortel's Turkish subsidiary Nortel Netas in Umraniye, Istanbul, the new Operations Center of Excellence will create approximately 300 jobs for graduates and experienced network support experts.

The creation of the Operations Center of Excellence is part of Nortel's ongoing business transformation. By reducing over 100 global centers and creating fewer, more focused, Centers of Excellence, Nortel aims to improve the quality of its technical product support, integration and acceptance services via efficiencies of scale, organization optimizations and process improvements.

"Nortel is focused on providing the very highest levels of customer support whilst remaining cost competitive," said Joel Hackney, senior vice president, Global Operations and Quality, Nortel. "Located in the heart of our EMEA region, the new Operations Center of Excellence in Turkey benefits from its proximity to major customers whilst drawing on a strong labor pool and improving our cost competitiveness."

The Global Operations Center of Excellence will provide technical and operational support for Nortel's worldwide next-generation carrier customers deploying mobile, converged and metro Ethernet networks, including optical networks. The specific functions the Center will perform include global network technical support for customers in North America and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), global product support, and solution integration and acceptance for EMEA.

"Next year Nortel Netas, our Turkish subsidiary, will celebrate its 40th anniversary," said Tim Watkins, president Northern Europe, the Middle East and Turkey, Nortel. "Our considerable experience working in the region allows us to be confident of the benefits that the new Center of Excellence will bring. We already conduct a considerable amount of world leading R&D at Nortel Netas and expect that this ethos of excellence will be transferred to the new Center of Excellence."

The first employees of Nortel's new Global Operations Center of Excellence have already commenced in-depth training on Nortel's solutions and services portfolio. With initially 300 engineers being recruited, the Global Operations Center of Excellence is expected to go into service in the first half of 2007.

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