The company already filed for bankruptcy protection last month

Feb 26, 2009 09:05 GMT  ·  By

It seems that Nortel Networks will cut even more jobs in the following months. According to the latest news, the company will lay off more than 10 percent of its workforce worldwide, namely 3,200 employees. The job reduction will be made during the following several months as the Nortel tries to survive a bankruptcy restructuring.

The company, a provider of telecommunications equipment, announced last year the layoff of 1,800 of its employees. At the moment, the company has around 30,000 people employed around the world. During the telecom boom, back in the 1990s and early 2000s, Nortel had around 95,000 workers. The company even managed to account for as much as one-third of the market value on the entire Toronto Stock Exchange in 2000.

During the last several years, Nortel hasn't been as good as before, the telecommunications market began to change and the company struggled to regain its footing. Its problems were worsened by the recent economic slowdown, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection both in the United States and Canada last month.

At the time when it did that, Nortel had only $2.4 billion in cash. According to the company, the money was supposed to be used “to preserve its liquidity and fund operations during the restructuring process.” According to a recent article published by The Wall Street Journal, the company would have liabilities of $11.8 billion and consolidated assets of $11.6 billion.

Last week, Verizon Wireless announced plans to build a new 4G wireless network that would use the LTE or Long Term Evolution technology, yet the operator hasn't selected Nortel as one of the suppliers for the infrastructure equipment, which accounted for another hit for the company. As many of you might already know, Verizon plans to start deploying the network this year, while it expects to make it available in 2010.