The monumental waste of yore was basically “monkey see, monkey do” from the top down – marble plaques made up for the “winners” of some “team builder, color-coordinated staplers and hole punches ordered, reams upon reams of countless varieties of expensive printer papers and labels stashed everywhere, then left to gather dust when a printer's ink ran out, right next to slick Nortel ad glossies that went nowhere, every conceivable phone gizmo cluttering desks and workspace ,all to help things get finished….. Labs fared no differently.

With every facility closure one might “walk the mile” of deserted cubicles and labs and behold the once fancy staplers and cables one more time, Indeed “finished”. Garbage, like the very “trash” it was all supposed to replace.

It never got easier for me to see it go that way. It was kInda like a cancerous growth that came back time and aagain. Last time I stopped in to check out the old haunts some old faces were gone, a few new ones come, slick new ad glossies were stacked about, but the cubes were empty, and, sure enough, ancient papers remained stacked amongst obsolete cables, the halls now filled with outbound palettes.

The new guys appeared to be guests from the outside and even abroad, learning the ropes, or cables, in order to apply them back home. Transients.

Its sturdy and even considered new-fangled in some places but someday Nortels legacy equipment will inevitably go the way of the floppy drive

This is very similar – what was once a cozy relationship, for the most part confined to Bell and on a smaller scale MTS, AGT, Sasktel, NBTEL – outgrew it's own succuss and the business decided to go global in a big way. At some point Bell realized its majority ownership was impeding global success, so NT went 'on the market' . Global expansion happened, primarily in the US and Europe but with sales offices in every rinky dinky little country on the planet. (Those same tiny sites usually bringing with them negative margin.) Eventually quality and innovation started to drop, so old and new customers started to look elsewhere, and with shrinking budgets they started tightening the purse strings. So NT had no choice but to reduce costs, which meant even less innovation and quality, which meant even less business – you get the picture.

The Calgary presence, at one time a large manufacturing facility, was clearly established as a form of political payback when AGT was buying all those SP-1's and then later many more green and brown DMS thing-a-ma-jigs. The volume of business that made investment in some of the Canadian locations no longer exists, so surprise look what gets chopped. I don't think anything is certain anymore, even Ottawa.

Where to from here? Is Nortel setting up shop in India or China or Turkey? Not really – they are in all three countries, but primarily via outsourced partners or JV's – Wipro, Infosys, TCS, GDNT, NETAS. I think Nortel took a look at a R&D facility in India – but they couldn't afford the facility.

Who's in the kitchen?

I haven't a clue what you are trying to say.

From a market standpoint, all competitors appear to be avoiding consolidation at all costs. I believe this may eventually change in 2008 and 2009. We live in interesting times.