George Ahlenius, president of the Chicagoland Nortel Networks Users Association, isn't a big fan of Nortel's support operations. Ahlenius uses a Nortel voice switch and the company's CallPilot voice-mail system at the Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago, where he works as telecommunications administrator. But he said he isn't satisfied with the level of support that the school gets from Nortel.

For example, the college currently has three unresolved trouble tickets logged with Nortel in connection with its voice-mail system, Ahlenius said. The school relies primarily on AT&T Inc. for basic network maintenance, he said, noting that the time it typically takes to get a response from Nortel's support staff "is more than we can afford in our business operations."

Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at Yankee Group Research Inc. in Boston, said that Nortel and other vendors trying to compete with Cisco can't avoid supporting and maintaining equipment that isn't their own.

"If you're not Cisco, you need to be willing to service multivendor environments," Kerravala said.

Hopkins said Nortel's new strategy includes "a sweeping simplification" of its services portfolio, which is being streamlined from 700 separate offerings to about 70. The company hopes to double its services revenue over the next three to five years, he added.