Marconi Corp. has named Joseph Ferrara chief executive officer of its Marshall-based North American operations.

	Joseph Ferrara

Ferrara, 39, of Franklin Park, takes the helm from Geoff Doy, who will remain with Marconi as chairman of the telecommunication equipment and services company's local division, which was recently renamed Marconi Data Networks.

As chief of Marconi's North American group, Ferrara will oversee the Data Networks division, which includes offices in Boston and Vienna, Va.; and the company's wireless division, based in Dallas.

Ferrara will lead a staff of about 600 in North America. "Really, there will be multiple levels of oversight," Ferrara said. "I am effectively running the day-to-day of the entire business. Geoff has the customer relationships ... and will focus on a strategic level."

Formerly known as the broadband routing and switching division, Marconi's Marshall campus employs 500 full-time staffers and contractors. Ferrara said that while the company said it employed 350 after the May layoffs, the number of people working on the campus was closer to 500, including contractual and support-related jobs. At its peak, the firm employed 1,400 in Marshall.

The leadership change is another shift at London-based Marconi, which has struggled to gain its footing since missing out on a share of a critical $17.8 billion contract with British Telecommunications in May. Hundreds of layoffs followed, including 100 local jobs, which Ferrara said were unrelated to the parent company's woes. The downsizing, he said, was to drive the company's growth and prepare it for expansion into new markets.

In June, the company did just that, launching the Marconi Service Router, which was developed in Marshall. The box, about the size of a small refrigerator, enables telecom service providers to offer private, secure networking capability for customers over long distances.

"The new router is very important for Marconi's growth prospects over the next three years," said Mark Bieberich, director of communications networking infrastructure at the Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm.

Gaining new customers, including Dalton Utilities in Dalton, Ga., doesn't mean that Marconi Data Networks is abandoning its government focus. "They will have to continue to find new growth areas in that segment -- that's where they are strongest," Bieberich said.

Marconi took over the Marshall operations in 1999 after purchasing local tech star Fore Systems for $4.5 billion. The company has been restructuring since the telecom downturn in 2001, including wiping out its $6.4 billion debt and slashing its work force worldwide. But when the company failed to win a part of a contract to build BT's "21st century" network in the spring, the outlook appeared bleak with looming layoffs and a possible sale.

Ferrara said Marconi expected flat earnings this year. First-quarter sales, which were disclosed yesterday for the Data Networks division, were $49.7 million, down nearly $18 million from the quarter the year before.

Marconi's London-based parent said its fiscal first-quarter loss grew to $64 million from about $17.8 million a year ago, as a result of the lost BT contract and a reorganization charge of about $48 million. Companywide sales fell 1.4 percent to about $507.3 million.