Nortel Buzzboard

From July 1-3, Nortel will be hosting over 60 analysts and media from all over Asia Pacific in Sydney, Australia for our first ever Asia Summit.

As you’d expect from a large-scale shindig like this, the three day event will feature panel, breakout and 1-on-1 sessions led by Nortel executives and subject matter experts. We’ll show off carrier, enterprise and services demos, and have IDC on hand to talk about Hyperconnectivity.

Bo and I don’t get to go to Australia, but expect a daily digest from us on the news coming out of Sydney. This includes key announcements, from-the-floor reports by our colleagues and a guest post recap at the end of the week.

Stay tuned…

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While NXTcomm08 was the big news on Buzzboard last week, Nortel was also attending WiMAX Forum Global Congress 2008 in Amsterdam.

This was our first WiMAX event since the announcement of our alliance with Alvarion earlier this month. Featured speakers at Global Congress included Barry West, CTO Sprint; Ron Resnick, President and Chairman, WiMAX Forum; Tzvika Friedman, CEO, Alvarion; and Scott Wickware, VP and General Manager WiMAX, Nortel.

Alvarion was very clear about the alliance being a landmark event for them, and Nortel used the event to showcase this new collaboration and demo our joint Mobile WiMAX solution, which combines technologies from both companies.

How did customers and analysts react to Nortel’s presence at the show and our joint solution demos …

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We’re straying off the beaten path this morning with a social media release focused on teleworking, titled Breaking the Pajama Stereotype.

The release says that we’re “reiterating [our] policy providing workplace flexibility” in light of the rising cost of fuel. More plainly, we’re sharing 15 years worth of insights on telework and reminding employees that we’ve been encouraging it since long before fuel prices skyrocketed.

With gas prices at an all-time high, we think that companies of all sizes should consider telework as a way to help employees reduce their costs. Truth be told, telework can be good for both workers and employers. The release points out that, at Nortel:

Employees who work from home one day a week save an estimated …

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All the talk about telepresence has to this point been completely focused on benefits for businesses. But what about tourists? While it’s likely not a huge untapped market, at least one person is bringing telepresence to the general public.

Paul St George has created The Telectroscope, a “portal” from London to New York City that is open to the public. While there is undeniably a little bit of technology at work in getting live images beamed from one side to the other, the display claims to use an elaborate set of mirrors to allow people to see through a tunnel dug under the Atlantic. You can see more …

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All About Nortel linked to this on Saturday while I was enjoying one of our too-few-sunny-days in Ottawa.

Mike Z sat down with the Financial Times last week on View from the Top, FT’s weekly Q&A column with global CEOs that features their views on the world of business today and predictions for the future of their industries.

The full video interview is a relatively brisk 20 minute two-parter (part 1, part 2). There’s also an edited transcript for those of you that only want the highlights.

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I’m a little behind on my coverage of NXTcomm08, so for your reading pleasure, here is a quick recap of what happened at the show this past week:

Nortel announced hosted unified communications solutions with Microsoft and IBM, as well as two new carrier Ethernet customers.
We participated in discussion panels that spanned broadband services, IPTV deployment, service delivery for Telcos and unified communications.
We showcased demos related to optical, carrier Ethernet, IPTV and carrier VoIP.
We hosted a customer appreciation event at the Wynn Hotel during game 6 of the 2008 NBA Finals. Bill Nelson, who lives in Massachusetts and is our executive vice president of Global Sales, was in attendence. The Celtics won. (We’re not taking credit for that last …

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A few minutes ago, the RCMP laid charges against former executives of Nortel who were dismissed for cause in 2004.

Nortel issued the following statement in response to the RCMP’s charges:
“Nortel has not been charged and was not the target of this investigation. The company has fully cooperated with the RCMP and will continue to do so. This is in relation to former executives of the company who were dismissed for cause in 2004.

“Nortel is rebuilding a great Canadian company while upholding the highest standards of integrity and ethics. Incredible progress has been made in the last few years, and today a new Nortel is emerging under the leadership of a new …

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In another example of Nortel’s ever-expanding foray into the brave new world of social media, Nortel has just gone live with another new blog on blogs.nortel.com.

This latest blog is focused on Voice Security - and you can find it here: http://blogs.nortel.com/voicesecurity/

Unlike Buzzboard’s broad scope, this new blog is laser-focused on everything Voice Security. Lawrence Dobranski is the primary blogger for the new page, and has been in the IT Security industry nearly 25 years.

Last week I took a break from my unending efforts to spread Nortel’s reach across all things new media, and talked to Lawrence Dobranski about the new blog. You can see that conversation below.

While you read this, I’m off to figure out …

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Tony Rybczynski debates Asterisk vs. xipXecs

Here on Buzzboard, I recently talked about the introduction of Nortel’s new SCS 500, a unified communications platform for SMBs. The “wow” part of the product is the fact that it is open-source, built on sipXecs (from SIPfoundry).

For some, the question that comes up is why Nortel chose to build the SCS 500 on sipXecs, and not Asterisk – since Asterisk seems to have much more visibility and momentum in the open-source space today.

Nortel enterprise guru Tony Rybczynski recently addressed this exact topic over on his blog on TMCnet, with a detailed list of reasons why SIPfoundry’s sipXecs is better …

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On the heels of last week’s Verizon announcement comes news of two more carrier Ethernet customer wins — one with Panhandle Telephone Cooperative, the other with Golden West Telecommunications; both independent carriers.

Pandhandle will proceed with a significant deployment of Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet solutions to support its newest, residential, triple play offerings that include HD IPTV.

Golden West, on the other hand, recently deployed our Carrier Ethernet solutions to support high-bandwidth, 10/100 Mb/s for Ethernet Virtual Private Network (E-VPN) services. These services are already up and running in key Golden West communities throughout South Dakota.

Ray Mota, chief strategist with Synergy Research Group, explains in the news release that “because of their ability to adapt easily …

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