All Aboard the VoIP Bandwagon

By Mark Evans | Published: December 4, 2008

One area where Nortel does well is VoIP, although you don’t hear much about it; perhaps because VoIP is so 2004/2005 when everyone thought VoIP was going to conquer the world, and Vonage was the toast of the town.

So, it’s interesting to see Nortel’s marketing machine start giving VoIP some serious love. Case in point is a press release – jazzed up with several podcasts – that Nortel issued today: “The Future of VoIP: Where Can it Take You?. It talks about how Nortel is the world’s leading carrier VoIP supplier, and how “the the future of VoIP is more than just voice. VoIP is a building block for next-generation networks that include both voice and multimedia to enable innovative communications applications.”

Now, all this may be accurate but the focus on VoIP seems like an abrupt shift in direction after all the focus on “hyperconnectivity” and energy efficiency. Then again, if VoIP is a strength and something Nortel still generates healthy revenue from selling, then maybe it deserves some more TLC.

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  • Happily Retired Cisco Exec

    Hyperconnectivity was just marketing nonsense fostered by a person who was unqualified to hold any position above Cabletron SE. An because Mike Z and his team are clueless as to the internetworking business, it become a mantra.
    Just repeat the mantra and fNOrtel will be better

    Going forward, a reconstructed Nortel should be built around VoIP products,
    UC products, CRM products, a subset of its wireless product set, a subset of its optical products set, and services. Unfortunately, this can not happen in
    Nortel's present set of circumstances and with its current management team and BOD. And of course, Nortel's bad management, poor development processes and controls, and lack of real R&D funding will erode Nortel's technology / product asstest over time.

    It will take an experienced management team that understands real planning and execution to pull this off – and it will need the protection of Chapter 11 bankruptcy to provide the right environment.

    Time marches on unmercifully and does not play favorites. Today Nortel has decent VoIP products and Quebec and Winnepeg once had NHL hockey teams.

  • KddiWin

    Hey Mark, why not mention of the Nortel LTE win with KDDI? This is very good news for Nortel.

    http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/081203/0457396.html

  • Tongue.In.Cheek

    Having an install base of 100 Million Carrier VoIP ports has direct relevance to the marketing of Hyperconnectivity. By adding new software based features and value to the VoIP ports to drive new interfaces and applications enables more SIP sessions per person which is part of the whole Hyperconnectivity concept.

    Research suggests (SOA, CEBP, CEA) that this trend will continue by embedding call/session control directly within business applications. This could also be done in a Social Networking context, such as Facebook, where you could have a Click-to-Call function associated with each of your Facebook friends. With this you could establish a VoIP ot FMC call to your friend through a simple click on the web page and have that call directed to the device of your choice.

    VoIP becomes the foundation with the new applications making the methods of communication easier.

    There's lots of information on this type of stuff on nojitter.com and ucstrategies.com.

  • The Psychiatrist

    hey HRCE,

    are you sure that you are happily retired,looks to me like you have the constant need to repeatedly imply the worst case scenario for Nortel.

    I'll now expect desk jockey to come out shortly and accuse me of attacking you for pointing out a blatent fact.

    funny how that works isn't,it's ok to slam Nortel execs all day long but don't ever single out the ones doing the slamming.

    This blog has become a secondary outlet for the trolls that infest other message boards.

  • protosphere

    I don't see VoIP saving the day any more than derisked WiMax, as they seek to do with LTE/4G after selling UMTS/3G as CDMA tanks.

    Come to think of it, nothing saved the day from Neptune to BSNL, Putian, etc (endless)

    The competition is fierce and who would buy Nortel worrying if they will be around.

    VoIP again? nah… albeit sounds a lot more professional than their avatars

  • less

    Lets slam anonymous pyschiatrists trying to heal Internet trolls instead of guiding them to The Light.

  • Happily Retired Cisco Exec

    Unfortunately for Nortel's employees and share holders, the worst case scenarios have repeatedly become reality under Mike Z's tenure at Nortel. At every inflection point, this management team has made the worst decision and the result is a a tremendous loss of market cap, tremendous cash burn, declining sales revenues, no profits and staggering losses, and a loss of market share in almost every product category.

    Furthermore, Nortel does not exist in a vacuum. Competitors with better balance sheet and distribution and service capabilities.

    Maybe Mike Z will prove me wrong – and maybe pigs will learn to speak French. And, I don't think you are attacking me. You just have a point of view.

  • Tired

    Is it not possible that at least some of the decisions made by Mike Z and company were really just the best of the choices available at the time? In retrospect, yes, many bad decisions were made, but I do wonder what it must have been like in their place at that time, faced with limited bad choices. I'm not trying to defend the management team at Nortel, just questioning if it's really fair to claim that they have always made all the wrong choices. It's easy to play Monday-morning quarterback.

  • broadbandbill

    TIC,

    VoIP is not just a great foundation for Nortel but also its salvation, however not a single person at the top knows how to exploit it; not one! The future of VoIP requires software architecture DNA, can anyone tell me who that person is on the management team? No one!….–bb

  • Another Nortel Watcher

    Besides having more deployed ports than any other Carrier VoIP solution on the planet, Nortel's Carrier VoIP solution uses more energy, real estate, engineering, and maintenance resources than any other VoIP solution on the market.

    Oh I forgot, we only care about those details for enterprise data products.

  • broadbandbill

    HRCE is correct; not just bad decisions after bad decisions but the WORST decisions time after time, which, mathematically, is practically impossible….– bb

  • broadbandbill

    Tired,

    See my post above. Also, baseball players can’t play Monday-morning quarterbacks; this was the WRONG TEAM from the get go!…–bb

  • Another Nortel Watcher

    Exactly. The Nortel Carrier VoIP business is like a car with the engine running and the transmission in neutral. Eventually the car runs out of gas if it just sits there. None of the senior leadership team have a clue what direction to take the VoIP portfolio in so that it doesn't erode and die.

  • broadbandbill

    ‘A Cabletron SE”

    HRCE — that's brilliant, wish I had though of it myself :) …– bb

  • Tongue.In.Cheek

    BB – since you used to work at Nortel who would you nominate and accept to run their VoIP business? Would they need one for Enterprise and another for Carrier?

  • Tongue.In.Cheek

    BB – since you used to work at Nortel who would you nominate and accept to run their VoIP business? Would they need one for Enterprise and another for Carrier?

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