London to Manchester Route in Vanguard for Delivering Tomorrow's 100G
Networks

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/24/09 --  Neos
Networks, the telecoms business of Scottish and Southern Energy plc,
has tested a 100G DWDM optical solution from Nortel(1) (TSX:
NT)(OTCBB: NRTLQ) on its existing optical backbone. Neos tested the
solution in a live network trial on a North/South route between
Manchester and London (via Cambridge) in the UK over a fibre distance
of 705km without signal regeneration.

The Neos 100G technology trial was conducted over the existing Neos
national network with live traffic and without any reengineering of
the existing network. The 100G trial follows earlier deployment of
40G over the network that supports the popular flexible Liquid
Bandwidth service and managed wavelength services of 1GbE, 10GbE and
40GbE. The innovative Liquid Bandwidth service allows Neos customers
to choose exactly how much bandwidth they need and only pay for that
amount. Customers can also upgrade or downgrade their bandwidth
within 48 hours of a request.

"Testing a 100G solution live on our network has helped provide us
with performance data that will put us at the forefront in the
development of next generation of high-bandwidth carrier services for
our customers ever increasing bandwidth needs," said Adrian Pike,
Group MD, Neos Networks. "Put simply, we're accelerating our network
planning to ensure we can future proof our customer's bandwidth
requirement. We have grown our fibre network substantially over the
past two years but have been careful to acquire and deploy quality
fibre assets which will prove vital as we continue to push the
bandwidth envelope to 100G and beyond."

With this unique 100G technology, Neos and other operators can
dramatically increase capacity, improve network utilization and
enable delivery of new higher bandwidth applications
cost-effectively. Neos recognizes the key requirements of wholesale
and enterprise services - supporting applications such as data centre
connectivity, cloud computing, data storage, streaming multimedia -
rests upon ubiquitous bandwidth.

"Neos is testing the very future of networking with its 100G live
trial," said Philippe Morin, president, Metro Ethernet Networks,
Nortel. "They are cost-effectively unlocking capacity from existing
network investments to meet additional demand, create service
innovations and future-proof their customer's networks. This live
test in the UK is another step towards broader adoption of 100G, and
I firmly believe that 100G technology and innovators like Neos will
be instrumental in bridging the digital divide in countries across
Europe."

The Neos trial helps prove that 100G technology works simply and
effectively on Neos' existing 10G/40G backbone network. Built on
Nortel's 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine, the Nortel 100G solution
automatically corrects for signal degradations due to fibre
impairments and is designed to operate with comparable performance to
today's 10G network while increasing capacity ten-fold.

The Neos adaptive optical backbone is a next generation network
across England, built with Nortel Common Photonic Layer and Optical
Multi-service Edge 6500 platforms, all managed by Nortel Optical
Manager. The 50GHz channel spaced highly scalable optical layer
includes 5 ROADMs (Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexers) that
provide routing flexibility points and optical bypass to avoid
traffic regeneration cost.

For more information on Nortel's industry leading optical portfolio,
see Nortel's 40G/100G microsite. For information on Nortel's presence
at OFC/NFOEC, including Philippe Morin's plenary session, visit the
Nortel OFC/NFOEC event page, or follow us at the event on the Nortel
Buzzboard news blog.

About Neos Networks Ltd

Neos Networks is part of the Scottish and Southern Energy Group, a
FTSE 30 company and the second largest energy company in the UK
employing over 17,000 people. As a subsidiary of SSE, it is also able
to position itself as one of the UK's most financially secure
telecoms network operators which gives an important competitive
advantage. Neos is a network operator with a product set focused on
the provision of L1 and L2 connectivity for other carriers, network
integrators and B2B delivered over its extensive owned UK fibre
network. www.neosnetworks.co.uk(2) www.scottish-southern.co.uk(2)

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications
capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality
for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service
provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and
business-critical applications. Nortel's technologies are designed to
help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance
by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they
need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150
countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the
Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit
www.nortel.com/news.

Certain statements in this press release may contain words such as
"could", "expects", "may", "anticipates", "believes", "intends",
"estimates", "targets", "envisions", "seeks" and other similar
language and are considered forward-looking statements or information
under applicable securities legislation. These statements are based
on Nortel's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and
projections about the operating environment, economies and markets in
which Nortel operates. These statements are subject to important
assumptions, risks and uncertainties, which are difficult to predict
and the actual outcome may be materially different from those
contemplated in forward-looking statements. For additional
information with respect to certain of these and other factors, see
Nortel's Annual Report on Form10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q
and other securities filings with the SEC. Unless otherwise required
by applicable securities laws, Nortel disclaims any intention or
obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements,
whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

(1)Nortel, the Nortel logo and the Globemark are trademarks of Nortel
Networks.

(2)This is a 3rd party link as described in our Web linking
practices.

Contacts:
Nortel
Greta Brown
+44-(0)1628-432968
Email: gretab@nortel.com

Nortel
Bo Gowan
(214) 334-2474
Email: bogowan@nortel.com
Website: www.nortel.com


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