Comments on: Nortel’s Biggest Issue: Its Prospects

By: Johnny Aerotek

Johnny Aerotek — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:25:42 +0000

And you expect this will allow Nortel to strive and grow again? In North America?

By: Johnny Aerotek

Johnny Aerotek — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 04:25:42 +0000

And you expect this will allow Nortel to strive and grow again? In North America?

By: Realist

Realist — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:32:26 +0000

Everyone should work for the canadian federal public service.
You don't have to know anything.
The number one qualification is the ability to speak broken english.

By: Nortel Realist

Nortel Realist — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:34:04 +0000

Nortel_will_survive sounds like a Nortel employee trying to drown in the Kool-aid. But I agree the categories are nuts. Nortel plays in the Enterprise (which includes Unified Communications, UM and VoIP), Wireline and Wireless carrier markets.

Today Nortel's too weak to acquire or be acquired…and it gets worse every day.

And I am a shareholder…I wipe my butt with the certificates as it's cheaper than TP.

By: Nortelhand

Nortelhand — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:25:40 +0000

If Nortel is to get out of this, they need products. Products that will be so compiling they can’t be resisted by clients. At present Nortel has nothing more than competitive pricing to move clients, and any client that pushes for Nortel is actually running a risk, no one ever has been fired for buying top tier equipment. But we have all seen people step outside of the top tier and they get waked by a problem. If the problem is big enough, it cost them there job, who would run the risk?

For the sake of employees and investors Mike Z needs to sell off Nortel, it is too small and has too many problems to rise to greatness in our lifetime.

PS Mike Z, please stay home next time no other company or employee wants your kind of help.

By: Nortel_will_survive

Nortel_will_survive — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:32:39 +0000

For 2008 I think there are 3 main areas for growth potential, none of which are included in your poll list.

Unified Communications – relationships with MIcrosoft and IBM (whom own approx. 95% of the global desktop software market) are key as Nortel drives communications convergence into these desktop software elements. A key fact is that the Nortel – Microsoft alliance has generated 600 accounts over the past year or so. Unified Communications is a significantly greater opportunity than Unified Messaging for Nortel, Avaya and Cisco.

40Gig Optical – Verizon purchased this from Nortel. The solution as I read it quadruples the optical capacity without any change to the physical fibre plant. If you could quadruple the gas mileage of your existing car by changing a few parts, would that interest you?

Metro (Carrier) Ethernet – PBB-TE (PBT) is very close to reaching formal industry standard designation. No longer is it a proprietary offering. Numerous companies are adopting the technology that Nortel essentially invented.

By: Vested Interest

Vested Interest — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:34:53 +0000

I thought WiMAX was going to lead them to the promised land. That and some product called Hyperconnectivety.

By: Doppelgänger

Doppelgänger — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:49:50 +0000

I agree. Besides all the criticism, Mr. Z. did tons of work to put the company fundamentals back on track from the bottom of the pit where Dunn left it. However, in times of commoditized and cheap products, Nortel yet needs to find its niche to attract shareholders and lift the stock price. Looking closely at the details, this is very evident on the YoY segmented results: Carrier -9%, Enterprise: -3%, Metro Eth: -4%. The only one that made some money was Services with 12%, but the phrase “benefited from the timing of project completion” does not make me comfortable. On the operating margins, surprisingly Enterprise was 0 and not surprisingly the Metro Eth was negative, maybe in an attempt to buy some of Cisco's market. Undoubtedly there is still a very long way to go but if Nortel does not find a new product soon, this way with be shortened very quick. Or it will continue to painfully shrink to 1/3 of its today size before it starts making some real money.