Nortel has scaled down its workforce reduction numbers slightly. Instead of the 3,500 planned firings announced in August, Nortel will instead chop 3,250 positions from its payroll, or about 9% of its workforce. The company says it will lay off approximately 1,400 employees in the U.S. and about 950 in Canada, with those employees to be notified by the end of June 2005. Nortel also will eliminate about 650 positions in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region and 250 elsewhere in the world. Nortel expects to notify about two-thirds of the employees by year-end and the rest by June 30. In addition to the layoffs, Nortel plans to reduce costs through a voluntary retirement program, real estate cutbacks and other moves. The plan is expected to deliver cost savings of about $500 million in 2005 and greater savings in subsequent years; but it will also cost more than initially expected - a $450 million charge vs. the August estimate of $300 million to $400 million. (Read the story)

Corvis, the parent company of Broadwing Communications, announced a name change to Broadwing Corp. The new identity will take effect Oct. 8, the same day the company will trade on the Nasdaq as BWNG. Corvis also announced that Mark Spagnolo, CEO of Broadwing Communications, will be leaving the company after a “six-month transition period.” David Huber, chairman and CEO at Corvis, will become the CEO of the communications division after Spagnolo’s departure. Although Corvis will continue to manufacture its optical networking products and sell those under the Corvis brand, the company says that the Broadwing brand is more recognizable. (Read the story)

Lucent says it will resell metro Ethernet routers from Riverstone Networks. Lucent will combine the Riverstone boxes with Juniper core routers and its own access and transport gear for carrier triple-play broadband requirements. Already, the Lucent/Riverstone union has lined up Spain's Telefonica as a customer. Lucent determined that development partner Juniper's routers were not optimal for native metro Ethernet applications even though Juniper recently announced Ethernet VPLS wins with Time Warner Telecom and Masergy. (Read the story)