Timken Cuts Customer Wait Time with Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center

Nortel Technology Unifies Multiple Centers to Act as One

JANUARY 16, 2007 - OHIO - The Timken Company, a global manufacturer of bearings and alloy steels, is reducing the amount of time a customer waits in queue by 25 percent using the Virtual Contact Center solution with VoIP from Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT].

With US$5.2 billion in annual sales in 2005 and operations across 27 countries, Timken has nine contact centers in North America but the company previously had no way to unify its contact centers to have them work as one team. Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center solution now allows Timken’s agents to interact as if they were co-located to present one face to the company.

Timken customers access a flexible contact center that quickly routes their calls through menu choices to the most appropriate agent. Since the call is not limited to the resources or time constraints of a specific location as it once was, wait times for Timken customers are significantly reduced. There has been a 25 percent to 40 percent improvement in customer responsiveness, without having to increase staff.

Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center solution also improves agent productivity and reduces costs by distributing customer calls across sites according to resource availability, demand, and skill set.

“Prior to implementing Nortel technology, our call centers could not quickly and efficiently share resources or skill sets across our call center sites,” said Rick Mowery, Timken section manager for Network Design and Engineering.

“Real-time displays help keep agents from being surprised by a queue that is backing up because they can see it in real-time, giving us a great grasp of who we’re getting calls from and how many calls are in the queue,” Mowery said. “With on-demand reports that can be customized based on the information needed, managers can quickly identify trouble spots and re-route calls in a matter of minutes if necessary.”

Timken also has a stronger grasp on call volume and can better serve their customers by ensuring lower wait times.

Timken managers are also benefiting from Nortel’s Virtual Contact Center because it saves them time from dealing with repetitive and redundant tasks such as manually consolidating metrics from various locations. Reports are generated automatically and reflect information gathered from all the contact centers.

“With its products ranging from use in elevators at the Eiffel Tower, to the Mars Rover, and to Air Force One, it is essential for Timken to ensure timely, reliable support for its customers,” said Dave Murashige, general manager, Multimedia Applications, Nortel. “The Nortel Contact Center technology brings Timken a more versatile environment so they can tap into their best resources based on availability, demand, and skill set to offer industry-leading customer service.”

Timken is also using Nortel’s Remote Gateway 9150 and Nortel Remote Gateway 9115 to support IP telephony (VoIP) services for all their branch offices. This makes it feasible for some of their workers to telecommute and connect securely to the virtual contact center network from their home offices.

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”, “targets”, “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. 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 most recent restatement and two previous restatements of its financial statements and related events; the negative impact on Nortel and NNL of their most recent restatement and delay in filing their financial statements and related periodic reports; 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 approval of its proposed class action settlement; 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 restatements 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; (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; the sufficiency of recently announced restructuring actions, including the potential for higher actual costs to be incurred in connection with these restructuring actions compared to the estimated costs of such actions and the ability to achieve the targeted cost savings and reductions of Nortel’s unfunded pension liability deficit; 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 the 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 objective; 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 effect 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 most recent restatement and two previous restatements of its financial statements; 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 support 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 support facility; 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 effect 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 the market price of Nortel’s publicly traded securities, or the share consolidation resulting in a lower total market capitalization or adverse effect on the liquidity of Nortel’s common shares. For additional information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see Nortel’s Annual Report on Form10-K/A, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other 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.

*Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel Networks.

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