All About Nortel

Only Nortel would come out with a double-shot of news on the week between Christmas and New Year. Earlier this week, it acquired Tasman Networks for $99.5-million to build a presence in the corporate router market. Today, it announces the sale of a 24% stake in Volt Delta for $56.4-million. Nortel picked up the equity [...]

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A quiver in Nortel’s technology portfolio is HSDPA - otherwise known as 3.5G - which is used to make wireless networks even faster. Nortel is particularly stoked about HSDPA because its wireless business, which accounts for a majority of sales, badly needs a jump-start to catch up with rivals such as Ericsson and Nokia. Earlier [...]

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Well, what do you know? Nortel has made an acquisition. In fact, it has bought a company that actually makes telecom equipment as opposed to a second-tier system integrator (PEC Solutions) that caters to a single vertical - the U.S. government. Nope, not this time. Nortel is spending $99.5-million for Tasman Networks, which makes IP routers [...]

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The Globe & Mail has a long feature on how Nortel went about replacing Bill Owens with Mike Zafirovski as CEO. It focuses on how the process was led by chairman Harry Pearce, and how Owens knew it was happening as he planned on retiring. Apparently, Owens played a “charade” by giving everyone the impression [...]

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Canadian Press has a nice end-of-year feature on Nortel and its new CEO Mike “Mr. Z” Zafirovski. Among the issues raised are Nortel’s growth (expected to trail t by turfing its all-things-to-all-people approach. While Nortel has stabilized itself, the reality there are still plenty of challenges lying the weeds. The first hurdle will be the [...]

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Hey, Nortel’s got a new corporate headquarters in lovely Etobicoke, Ont. In a classic case of downsizing, Nortel is moving from a one-million sq. foot facility in Brampton on a 63-acre site to a cozy 11-story, 160,000 sq. office building. Best of all, it’s just a short hop, skip and jump from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, [...]

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Is Mike Zafirovski cleaning house at Nortel? It certainly looks like it after the company said chief marketing officer Clent Richardson will be leaving March 1 due to “personal reasons”. Richardson plans to move his family from Toronto to the west coast. I guess it saw another Arctic-like winter coming his way and figured it [...]

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Anyone else wondering what’s going between Nortel and ex-CEO Frank Dunn. It’s been 20 months since he was fired for “cause”, and little has emerged in terms of Nortel suing Dunn, or Dunn suing Nortel. When and/or if the lawsuits are filed, they would hopefully provide some of the salacious details of what went down [...]

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In what was one of many unwise moves, Nortel got out of the high-speed access business in 2001 - just when the broadband market was poised to take off. However, according to TD Newcrest analyst Chris Umiastowski, Nortel is looking to get back into the access market using gigabit passive optical networking (GPON) technology. Umiastowski [...]

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Hey, we’re all still obsessed with Nortel even though its lustre has evaporated - as well as three CEOs in the past four years. At dinner parties, during taxi drives and dentist appointments Nortel continues to be lively discussed. Why? Beats me, but I figure most Canadians own Nortel in one way, shape or form [...]

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