Surprise, Nortel’s Still Innovating

By Mark Evans | Published: August 28, 2009

Lost in the shuffle of Nortel’s struggles to survive and its sad stumble into bankruptcy protection is the fact there’s still a lot of smart people creating innovative technology – something that has been overshadowed for a long time.

A good example is an announcement earlier this week that Nortel has come up with technology that can complete a hand off between CDMA and LTE networks. This is a significant development for wireless carriers such as Verizon using CDMA, and looking to move into the faster 4G world.

“Nortel innovation will help CDMA operators enjoy a smooth migration to LTE,” Larry Murat, vice president of LTE R&D, said in a statement. “Although CDMA networks will remain the primary networks for many years to come, LTE will become a key piece of the networking puzzle as early as next year.”

(Note: Ericsson is buying Nortel’s LTE R&D unit as part of the $1.13-billion purchase of the CDMA business).

For more thoughts on Nortel’s CDMA-to-LTE news, Network World Canada’s Howard Solomon has some thoughts.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/3G/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=219500193


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  • horace_grimswold

    Any time I hear “surprise” and “innovation” and “Nortel” in the same sentence, I usually expect “unpleasant” somewhere in that sentence.

    And lo and behold, Nortel's pioneering Accounting Innovation and Financial Innovation continues.

    Ottawa Citizen: IRS slaps $3b back tax claim on Nortel
    http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/hits+Nort…

  • tiredofitall

    There are those of us that still work here that do what we do because we enjoy it. I work with some pretty cool people who really have fun building software.

    Sometimes the best way to deal with all this crap it to continue doing what you enjoy doing and focus on the good parts of it.

    Internal motivation is all that is left.

  • joremero

    holy cow, I smell creditors with empty pockets. Tax might take the first spot over creditors

  • watching…

    And, of course….no one saw this coming.

  • GoProto

    “Lost in the shuffle of Nortel’s struggles to survive”
    ————————————————
    The only people at NT struggling to survive are the remaining employees and shareholders – to survive through a re-structuring plan that never surfaced, to re-build a once great company to solvency once again and uphold their name. Z & company and BoD have been headed straight to essential liquidation of assets all along – that's what their Actions show, never mind their talk and hype.

  • less

    Its must be hard even for an actor to get into character and find motivation as the movie set is taken down around them due to a shutdown of production, caused by lack of funding –
    - much like lying in bed awaiting biopsy results as friends and relatives at bedside discuss how to split up your stuff once you're gone, while your place of employ – like, uh, Nortel, for example – was doing the same with your livelihood.

  • joremero

    Maybe had the creditors known this a while ago, they wouldn't have allowed the fire-sale, since now they won't get anything. The IRS was silently waiting in the corner and laughing their ass off….

  • NTInfidel

    How could anyone see this coming. Nortel hasn't made any profit in 10 years. How they hell can they owe $3B in taxes??

  • tiredofitall

    Nice analogy. Note that at this point the morphine stupor would be helpful.

  • less

    Bummer I cant afford the meds

  • less

    This made me chuckle. For one, the picture of “Nortel” all alone in the desert, and also:

    2,038 kilometers is a long way to go in any situation. Apply that distance across the rugged outback of Australia and it seems even longer. Now take that distance, in that environment, and try to build a bleeding edge 100G optical network and you have yourself a real challenge.

    But that's what Telstra and Nortel did last month when they set a 100G world distance record by crossing 2,038km of Australia with an “unregenerated” 100G trial network.

    Another interesting data point from the video is that Nortel and Telstra were able to provision the network in about 12 days

    Folks responded with:

    “In the video, Paul Thompson says the network was provisioned in 12hrs, not 12 days.

    “…the CPL and 6500 equipment was already installed as part of the Telstra 10G network , so all that was needed was two 100G cards for the network , acting as book ends for the link , as you mentioned it is a un-regenerated network . So why would that take 12 days , 12 hours seems more plausible…

    Good stuff can take 12 (-18) months to happen at Nortel.

    http://community.nortel.com/go/blogs/buzzboard/…

  • Montrealer

    Sounds like the hand of our neighbour is coming crashing down. It was up to our Canadian government to help us out, and how many times did we need to restructure to get their attention??? I think it's a slap in the face to all Canadian's who voted Conservative. Just too bad it's going to hurt alot of good people.

  • Montrealer

    My comments were meant for a reply to joremero way down below…

  • Montrealer

    Sounds like the hand of our neighbour is coming crashing down. It was up to our Canadian government to help us out, and how many times did we need to restructure to get their attention??? I think it's a slap in the face to all Canadian's who voted Conservative. Just too bad it's going to hurt alot of good people.

  • Montrealer

    Sounds like the hand of our neighbour is coming crashing down. It was up to our Canadian government to help us out, and how many times did we need to restructure to get their attention??? I think it's a slap in the face to all Canadian's who voted Conservative. Just too bad it's going to hurt alot of good people.

  • Montrealer

    My comments were meant for a reply to joremero way down below…

  • Montrealer

    Sounds like the hand of our neighbour is coming crashing down. It was up to our Canadian government to help us out, and how many times did we need to restructure to get their attention??? I think it's a slap in the face to all Canadian's who voted Conservative. Just too bad it's going to hurt alot of good people.

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