Nortel* has announced the opening of its new Customer Service Center of Excellence (CoE), in Mexico City, where more than 300 newly-hired professionals will focus on delivering services and telecom solutions to service providers across North America, Europe, Caribbean and Latin America.

Nortel plans to invest and spend US$ 38 million in the new Customer Service CoE over the next five years which is focused on next-generation network (NGN) engineering, VoIP solutions, multimedia, databases and radio-frequency technologies for global service providers and carriers. The CoE will be powered by state of the art tools, quality processes such as Lean Six Sigma and the latest in Nortel technology. It will support order management and network engineering and field operations such as delivery and application of remote software integration. Nortel intends to hire recent graduates from public and private Mexican universities to staff the CoE and should have 300 employees working at the CoE by June 2007.

\"This is an exciting time for Nortel as we continue transforming our operations to be more efficient and customer-focused,\" said Joel Hackney, senior vice president, Global Operations and Quality, Nortel. \"We are very committed to continue providing the highest levels of quality to our customers at a competitive cost, while ensuring we maximize investments in our resources.\"

Nortel\'s new Customer Service CoE adds to the previously-established VoIP CoE, which has been operating in Mexico for over one year, now under the management of Rafael Velasco.

\"Mexico offers a great environment, with excellent professionals, universities and a diverse, well-established infrastructure in a centralized location in the Americas,\" said Martha Bejar, president, Caribbean and Latin America, Nortel. \"We are very glad to continue contributing to this country by offering professional opportunities to over 300 individuals who will provide the kind of high-quality service we require for this new CoE.\"

Nortel will drive process excellence at its new Customer Service CoE through three major focus areas: supplier life-cycle management; design or parts standardization; and a data-intensive best practice that examines product or component pricing and then uses that data to drive down costs through supplier negotiations.