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Nortel promises 5000 new jobs

Devon and Northern Ireland big beneficiaries

Nortel Networks will create 5000 jobs worldwide in a $400 million splurge on its optical Internet systems unit. The Canadian vendor yesterday announced plans to triple production capacity in the division in 2000, creating jobs in systems integration and testing, engineering and customer service. Many of the new jobs will be in the UK, which can expect to see 1800 new staff. Of the rest, Montreal will gain 1450 and Ottowa 850. The company said it would be expanding its existing campuses in Paignton, Devon, and Monkstown in Northern Ireland. These two operations will divvy up $105 million of Nortel's investment. The company will also build a factory in Ottawa and boost staff numbers in its customer service sections in the US. The workers will build Nortel's optical networking kit –- which uses lasers to aid communication between electronic devices running the Web. This will aid Nortel's vision of the "optical Internet", a network carrying data at super-human speeds on fiber-optic cables. Nortel Networks is building 32 out of 40 national and pan-European optical networks which it has announced over the last two years. Nortel has around 71,000 staff worldwide, with 1998 sales of $17.6 billion. ®

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