Nortel Buzzboard

As you’ve probably seen already, earlier today Nortel announced 4Q and full year 2007 financial results.  Media headlines covering our announcement have obviously focused on two main items - the $1.1B non-cash charge we took against our Canadian Deferred Tax Asset, and the announcement of further restructuring that includes a 2,100 net reduction in employees. But behind those headlines are indications that the underlying fundamentals of Nortel’s operations are trending up:

2007 revenues were up 2% YoY when you account for the divestiture of the UMTS business that happened at the end of 2006.
Nortel has now shown six consecutive quarters of strong year over year improvement in operating margin.  OM is now at the highest levels for the company since …

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I’m an old wireless guy by trade. I used to do wireless PR for Nortel. My first cellphone was a black Radio Shack brick. So being at a show like HIMSS08 in Orlando, where there’s strong Wi-Fi coverage throughout a good portion of the Orange County Convention Center, is… well, quite amazing compared to where things started for me 20 or so years ago.

But as amazing as it is to have convenient Wi-Fi access to check my e-mail and blog, it’s nothing compared to how wireless technology is revolutionizing healthcare.

Take Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, for example. After retiring its paper medical records …

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Healthcare is always a hot topic, but never more so than today in sunny Orlando, Fla. That’s where HIMSS08, the annual conference of the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society, is now in full swing.

Politicians talk about it. In fact, former U.S. Senator Bill Frist talks about it in this morning’s keynote address. The first practicing physician elected to the U.S. Senate since 1928, Frist is a leading advocate of IT as a means of lowering healthcare costs and making it more available to those in need.

Nortel is here as well (booth #6281), demonstrating a number of new Healthcare Solutions designed to help do just that.

Case in point - …

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Are you a unified communications rock star?  That’s the question posed in this new lighthearted multimedia quiz on nortel.com.  Take our quiz and we’ll let you know if you’re Rock Star material: http://www.nortel.com/multimedia/flash/demo/rockstar/

Nortel and Microsoft are working to make being a technology rock star easier.  In last week’s edition of Network World, Jim Duffy charts the progress of Nortel and Microsoft’s Innovative Communications Alliance to develop UC solutions.

And in case you haven’t seen it, Nortel has just launched a new series of TV commercials, the first of which focuses on unified communications.  See below for the “long version” of Nortel’s new unified communications TV spot.

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This week is “Education Week” at Nortel, and as such we are highlighting a panoply of Nortel education customers and activities to show how Nortel is transforming the educational environment through innovations in unified communications, advanced security and wireless mobility designed to enhance collaboration and enrich the learning experience.

Nortel has announced recent implementations that are helping to make education possible for K-12 and higher education students across the globe - from Kentucky to India to Australia. In North America, the State of Kentucky, the first state to bring broadband Internet access into every public school, is further enriching the K-12 learning experience with intelligent classrooms and online tools for collaboration and assessment based on an education network solution …

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Microsoft has recently qualified Nortel’s CS 1000 as the world’s first IP-PBX tested to work seamlessly with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. 

In October 2007, Microsoft formally introduced its Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program as part of its larger unified communications launch.  This exacting qualification program was created to ensure that customers have a seamless experience with setup, support, and use of qualified telephony gateways and IP-PBXs with Microsoft’s unified communications software.  

With Nortel’s official qualification (which you can see on Microsoft’s site here) the Nortel Communication Server (CS) 1000 is now the world’s first IP-PBX to be qualified Microsoft Unified Communications Open Interoperability Program for enterprise telephony infrastructure.  Not only that, but it has also been proven to support Dual Forking and Dual Forking with Remote Call Control (RCC).  

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Nortel plans to announce fourth quarter and full year 2007 results on February 27, 2008.  The earnings press release will be issued at approximately 6:00 am ET.

Nortel’s President and CEO Mike Zafirovski and Executive Vice President and CFO Pavi Binning will host an audio webcast that morning at 8:30 am ET to discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2007 results.

To listen in on the audio webcast, please visit: http://www31.nortel.com/webcast.cgi?id=6584 

If you miss the live event, an audio webcast replay will be available shortly after the call ends at: http://www31.nortel.com/webcast.cgi?id=6585  

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If you are a frustrated mobile user in the UK or Ireland, you may want to jump on the M-WAG bandwagon.  The Mobile WiMAX Acceleration Group (M-WAG) was founded in July 2007 by Nortel and several other likeminded companies help accelerate WiMAX deployment in the UK and Ireland.

M-WAG was active at Mobile World Congress this week, unveiling plans for a mobile WiMAX pilot network.

You can also view the below video to get a little more information on M-WAG’s activities at MWC. 

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According to a new survey of SMB and enterprise decision-makers, Converged Mobility (also called Fixed Mobile Convergence or FMC) is the new service SMBs are most likely to consider from a service provider.

The survey was conducted by RONIN Corporation on behalf of Nortel, and asked ~900 decision-makers across the US, UK and France. The survey was designed to gain insight into SMB perception and use of VoIP, along with SIP applications like click-to-connect and converged mobility for Wi-Fi and cellular calling from dual-mode handsets.

Converged mobility - the ability to make phone calls over WiFi and cellular networks via a dual-mode phone - was the #1 choice of respondents. It was followed by web services like click-to-connect and converged desktop applications …

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While reading Nortel’s news from Monday at Mobile World Congress, I couldn’t help but relate some of it back to Nortel’s long-lasting “Evergreen” philosophy.

Ever since we shipped the first digital PBX (the SL-1) in 1975, Nortel has had a clear focus on “investment protection” – which is a fancy term for making sure our customers don’t have to rip out perfectly good telecom equipment in order to benefit from new technologies or solutions.

This philosophy lives on today, and it is evident in the news from Monday.  While most of the focus at MWC will be around bleeding edge 4G technologies like LTE and WiMAX, the reality is that many of the world’s wireless operators can’t just throw out …

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