Bell South to lay off 1,500 managers

BellSouth said it will layoff 1,500 managers to better compete “in the competitive broadband marketplace.” The reductions will take place in supervisory and non-supervisory management positions, including staff support functions, and represent about 2.4% of the carrier’s workforce. BellSouth will record an after-tax charge of approximately $95 million, $50 million of which will be recognized in the fourth quarter of 2005. BellSouth expects the workforce reductions to save the company $175 million annually.

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MCI and Microsoft are teaming to provide a VoIP phone service that lets customers make phone calls from their PCs to traditional phones that are connected to the public phone network. Called MCI Web Calling for Windows Live Call, the service is currently in beta testing, but will be generally launched next year, the companies say. Final pricing is not available, but during testing, calls cost 2.3 cents per minute.

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Verizon is testing equipment from Nortel for building an IMS infrastructure. The carrier is testing Nortel’s Application Server 2000 for running voice and multimedia services; its Home Subscriber Server for maintaining customer information and preferences; and its Media Gateway Controller 2000. Also involved in the test are the Call Session Controller 1000 and a variety of gateways between the public-switched telephone network and IP networks. Nortel is also a key supplier of softswitches and media gateways for Verizon’s VoIP buildout.