"In June, I want to hear a reaffirmation from him that the end users who have been longtime Nortel customers are important to Nortel," Dooley said. "And I fully expect he'll say that." The school district supports 51,000 students and 8,000 teachers with Nortel telecommunications equipment, using fiber-optic links between sites.

In general, "there is optimism in the Nortel customer base," said INNUA Executive Director Victor Bohnert. "Customers finally feel that Nortel is taking control of its sales channels and that [executives] are concerned about defending their market share."

But Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst in Atlanta, was more skeptical about Zafirov-ski's ability to turn around the Brampton, Ontario-based vendor. "What he says sounds good, but Nortel has announced things that sounded good in the past, and they are still digging out," Kagan said.

Nortel spent $73 million last year on development of the six product programs that are being canceled, according to Zafirovski. Spending on the three initiatives that are being scaled back totaled $80 million in 2005 -- an investment that will be reduced to about $40 million this year, he said.

On the other hand, the company plans to increase its spending on WiMax, multimedia subsystems and video networking by $100 million this year and another $67 million in 2007.