Nortel Canada's long-suffering creditors will finally begin to receive their share of more than US$4 billion to be distributed under a plan approved in January, eight years after the former technology titan began bankruptcy proceedings.

Nortel Networks Corp. — the formerly public multinational company that was headquartered in Canada — announced Friday that the initial distribution of the money is expected to be made in late June or early July.

The distributions will include $4.165 billion US that Nortel Canada has now received as its share of a negotiated settlement after a years-long battle over a total of $7.3 billion US raised by the sale of the company's worldwide assets.

Nortel Canada will make its payments in stages to bondholders, suppliers and former employees who filed claims against the Canadian portion of the business, which was at one time among the world's biggest network suppliers.

The exact timing and amounts of the payments are yet to be determined but Nortel's court-appointed monitor has said that creditors will get less than half of what they'd claimed.

Creditors with claims primarily in Canadian dollars will be entitled to between 45 cents and 49 cents per dollar owed. Creditors with claims in other currencies will receive between 41.5 cents and 45 cents in U.S. currency.