Nortel Networks, which has been laying-off thousands of workers in North America as it struggles to reorganize under creditor protection, said Tuesday that it has set up a Global Network Operations Center (GNOC) in Bangalore, to help remotely manage and support the networks of its carrier and enterprise customers in Asia, Europe, North and South America.
The Bangalore GNOC provides round-the-clock network surveillance and performance monitoring for voice and data networks, Nortel said.
The new center in Bangalore is Nortel’s fifth network operations center worldwide. Nortel’s other network operation centers are located in North America, Europe, China and in Gurgaon in north India.
The Gurgaon center services customers both in India and abroad including Indian telecommunications service provider, Bharti Airtel, said Suresh Kumar, vice president for Managed Service Delivery at Nortel Asia Pacific.
The company decided not to expand in Gurgaon but to instead set up another network operations center in Bangalore to provide disaster recovery to its customers, Kumar said.
The Bangalore center, which began operations about four months ago, already supports more than 50 customers worldwide, Kumar said.
Nortel set up a second center in India to take advantage of the easier availability of skilled staff in the country at a low cost, Kumar said.
The company did not disclose how many people it employs at the two centers in India. The Bangalore center is designed to scale up to 300 staff depending on the business, Kumar said.