Bharti, Nortel Sign Managed Services Agreement for Contact Center Technology

New Delhi, India (ots/PRNewswire) -

- Hosted Services 'Per Call' Pricing to Make Business Simpler

Bharti Tele-Ventures, India's leading provider of
telecommunications services, has signed a five-year managed services
agreement with Nortel(x) (NYSE: NT; TSX: NT) to host contact center
services for more than 19.7 million - and growing - subscribers to
Bharti's Airtel GSM mobile, broadband and fixed-line services.

Nortel will create a Network Operations Center (NOC) in New Delhi
and provide network design, integration, support and maintenance
services for Bharti's contact center architecture.

A 24x7 'virtual storefront' voice portal based on Nortel's
interactive voice response (IVR) solution will be the cornerstone of
Bharti's new contact center operation. Calling a single number from
anywhere in India, Bharti's wireless and wireline customers will be
able to speak in English, Hindi, or four other regional languages to
complete routine transactions and subscribe to new services while the
system interacts with them in a natural, conversational manner.
Nortel has also designed the architecture for future interactive
video response capability.

To simplify business, Bharti has designed with Nortel an
innovative 'per call' approach to paying for Nortel's hosted
services, linking its contact center cost structure to network
traffic, service levels and customer growth.

"Bharti's objective is to differentiate itself in India's highly
competitive communications environment by ensuring customer delight
through personalized customer service, and accomplishing this through
a highly cost- effective business model," said Dr. Jai Menon,
director, IT and Innovation, Bharti Tele-Ventures. "We found the
right technology provider to team up with in Nortel, a worldwide
leader in IVR technology with a proven track record in contact center
innovation for more than 30 years."

"Throughout our close collaboration with Bharti in designing this
project, we have focused on meeting its business objectives with the
best available technology and services," said Ashoka Valia, managing
director, India, Nortel. "Providing a fresh approach and an enhanced
level of customer care, as measured through the satisfaction of
Bharti's customers, is our joint objective."

The Nortel solution also includes virtualization of the contact
center infrastructure, world-class technology for call forecasting,
call routing, call prioritization, multimedia, unified messaging, and
IP-enabled video.

Complex customer service requests requiring individual attention
will be forwarded to appropriate agents in contact centers operated
by four of Bharti's strategic business process outsourcing (BPO)
vendors - TeleTech Services, Hinduja TMT, IBM Daksh and MphasiS.
Nortel has already deployed more than 6,000 agent stations for these
centers, all of which are based on Nortel technology.

Nortel's Global Services include a full range of integrated
services for design, deployment, management and maintenance of
end-to-end multi-vendor network solutions, including seamless
migration to next generation technologies.

Nortel has deployed more than 60,000 contact centers and 8,000
self- service solutions worldwide in the last five years. Nortel
contact center solutions support an estimated four million agents
handling 70 million calls per day. The Nortel self-service portfolio
encompasses an advanced suite of scalable self-service platforms to
meet the requirements of customers of all sizes - small businesses,
large enterprises and service providers. Nortel's complete, turnkey
solutions include an IVR portfolio, graphical user interface (GUI)
tools, speech technology, and network services. Nortel has designed
and deployed over 200 applications in more than 16 countries,
according to Frost and Sullivan market research.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications
capabilities that enhance the human experience, ignite and power
global commerce, and secure and protect the world's most critical
information. Our next-generation technologies, for both service
providers and enterprises, span access and core networks, support
multimedia and business-critical applications, and help eliminate
today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying
networks and connecting people with information. Nortel does business
in more than 150 countries. For more information, visit Nortel on the
Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit
www.nortel.com/news.

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as
"could", "expects", "may", "anticipates", "believes", "intends",
"estimates", "plans", "envisions", "seeks" and other similar language
and are considered forward-looking statements or information under
applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on
Nortel's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections
about the operating environment, economies and markets in which
Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important
assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict
and the actual outcome may be materially different. Although Nortel
believes expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements
are reasonable based upon the assumptions in this press release, they
may prove to be inaccurate and consequently Nortel's actual results
could differ materially from its expectations set out in this press
release. Further, actual results or events could differ materially
from those contemplated in forward-looking statements as a result of
the following (i) risks and uncertainties relating to Nortel's
restatements and related matters including: Nortel's recently
announced restatement and two previous restatements of its financial
statements and related events and that the previously filed financial
statements of Nortel and NNL and related audit reports should not be
relied upon; the negative impact on Nortel and NNL of their announced
restatement and delay in filing their financial statements and
related periodic reports causing them to breach their public debt
indentures and obligations under their credit facilities with the
possibility that the holders of their public debt or NNL's lenders
would seek to accelerate the maturity of that debt; and causing a
breach of NNL's support facility with EDC with the possibility that
EDC would refuse to issue additional support under the facility,
terminate its commitments under the facility or require NNL to cash
collateralize all existing support; legal judgments, fines, penalties
or settlements, or any substantial regulatory fines or other
penalties or sanctions, related to the ongoing regulatory and
criminal investigations of Nortel in the U.S. and Canada; any
significant pending civil litigation actions not encompassed by
Nortel's proposed class action settlement; any substantial cash
payment and/or significant dilution of Nortel's existing equity
positions resulting from the finalization and approval of its
proposed class action settlement, or if such proposed class action
settlement is not finalized, any larger settlements or awards of
damages in respect of such class actions; any unsuccessful
remediation of Nortel's material weaknesses in internal control over
financial reporting resulting in an inability to report Nortel's
results of operations and financial condition accurately and in a
timely manner; the time required to implement Nortel's remedial
measures; Nortel's inability to access, in its current form, its
shelf registration filed with the United States Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC), and Nortel's below investment grade credit
rating and any further adverse effect on its credit rating due to
Nortel's restatement of its financial statements; any adverse affect
on Nortel's business and market price of its publicly traded
securities arising from continuing negative publicity related to
Nortel's restatements; Nortel's potential inability to attract or
retain the personnel necessary to achieve its business objectives;
any breach by Nortel of the continued listing requirements of the
NYSE or TSX causing the NYSE and/or the TSX to commence suspension or
delisting procedures; any default in Nortel's filing obligations
extending beyond May 9, 2006, causing any Canadian securities
regulatory authority to impose an order to cease all trading in
Nortel's securities within the applicable jurisdiction or to impose
such an order sooner if Nortel fails to comply with the alternate
information guidelines of such regulatory authorities; (ii) risks and
uncertainties relating to Nortel's business including: yearly and
quarterly fluctuations of Nortel's operating results; reduced demand
and pricing pressures for its products due to global economic
conditions, significant competition, competitive pricing practice,
cautious capital spending by customers, increased industry
consolidation, rapidly changing technologies, evolving industry
standards, frequent new product introductions and short product life
cycles, and other trends and industry characteristics affecting the
telecommunications industry; any material and adverse affects on
Nortel's performance if its expectations regarding market demand for
particular products prove to be wrong or because of certain barriers
in its efforts to expand internationally; any reduction in Nortel's
operating results and any related volatility in its market price of
its publicly traded securities arising from any decline in its gross
margin, or fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates; any
negative developments associated with Nortel's supply contract and
contract manufacturing agreements including as a result of using a
sole supplier for key optical networking solutions components, and
any defects or errors in Nortel's current or planned products; any
negative impact to Nortel of its failure to achieve its business
transformation objectives; restrictions on how Nortel and its
president and chief executive officer conduct its business arising
from a settlement with Motorola Inc.; additional valuation allowances
for all or a portion of its deferred tax assets; Nortel's failure to
protect its intellectual property rights, or any adverse judgments or
settlements arising out of disputes regarding intellectual property;
changes in regulation of the Internet and/or other aspects of the
industry; Nortel's failure to successfully operate or integrate its
strategic acquisitions, or failure to consummate or succeed with its
strategic alliances; any negative affect of Nortel's failure to
evolve adequately its financial and managerial control and reporting
systems and processes, manage and grow its business, or create an
effective risk management strategy; and (iii) risks and uncertainties
relating to Nortel's liquidity, financing arrangements and capital
including: the impact of Nortel's recently announced restatement and
two previous restatements of its financial statements; any
acceleration under their public debt indentures and credit
facilities, which may result in Nortel and NNL being unable to meet
their respective payment obligations; any inability of Nortel to
manage cash flow fluctuations to fund working capital requirements or
achieve its business objectives in a timely manner or obtain
additional sources of funding; high levels of debt, limitations on
Nortel capitalizing on business opportunities because of credit
facility covenants, or on obtaining additional secured debt pursuant
to the provisions of indentures governing certain of Nortel's public
debt issues and the provisions of its credit facilities; any increase
of restricted cash requirements for Nortel if it is unable to secure
alternative support for obligations arising from certain normal
course business activities, or any inability of Nortel's subsidiaries
to provide it with sufficient funding; any negative affect to Nortel
of the need to make larger defined benefit plans contributions in the
future or exposure to customer credit risks or inability of customers
to fulfill payment obligations under customer financing arrangements;
any negative impact on Nortel's ability to make future acquisitions,
raise capital, issue debt and retain employees arising from stock
price volatility and further declines in Nortel's market price of its
publicly traded securities, or any future share consolidation
resulting in a lower total market capitalization or adverse affect on
the liquidity of Nortel's common shares. For additional information
with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel's
securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required by
applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or
obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements,
whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

(x)Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of
Nortel Networks.

ots Originaltext: Nortel Networks
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Contact:
For further information: Mark Buford, +1-(972)-684-8512,
mark.buford@nortel.com; Patti Vernon, +1-(905)-863-1035,
patricve@nortel.com; Sheetal Mehta, +91-22-5697-8761,
smehta@nortel.com