Nortel's Carling Avenue campus (Photo by Darren Brown, OBJ)

Reports that Nortel's WiMAX group has experienced cuts or has been abandoned could not be confirmed or denied by Nortel officials this week.

"I don't think there's anything new here. As I'm sure you're aware, at the end of February, we announced the next phase of restructuring as part of our ongoing business transformation. So that planning is underway," Karen Monaghan, spokesperson for the telecom firm in Ottawa, said on Tuesday.

In an effort to save $300 million from its bottom line, Nortel in February said it would cut 2,100 jobs globally, and said at the time that some of those cuts would be in Ottawa.

However, the company at the time would not provide a regional breakdown of where those cuts would be, or precisely when they would occur.

Ms. Monaghan reiterated that specific details were still unavailable for the Ottawa area.

"In terms of specific businesses or technologies being affected at this point, we don't have any further information at this point."

WiMAX, or Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is technology that provides wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways.

Rumours that the cuts included the WiMAX group, and that the entire group had been "abandoned" in Ottawa, were downplayed by Ms. Monaghan.

"WiMAX is one of our 4G technologies, and certainly one that Nortel is gaining customers in," she said. "We just launched our first WiMAX network."

Asked if there were employees still working at the WiMAX group in Ottawa, Ms. Monaghan said "Yes, all of our R&D, basically all of our products lines, are represented in Ottawa to some extent or another."

Ms. Monaghan said that as of March 25, 2008, Nortel employed some 4,600 workers in Ottawa. That's down from the 5,000 workers Nortel had been reporting consistently since at least 2006, and as recently as the Winter/Spring 2008 edition of Ottawa Technology Magazine.

She added that Nortel strives to maximise normal attrition rates, and often helps its employees find other opportunities within the company. In 2007, in fact, Ms. Monaghan said approximately 30 per cent of employees who were laid off were "redeployed or transferred" to other positions at Nortel.

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