Nortel Buzzboard

Philippe Morin, Nortel President of Metro Ethernet NetworksPhilippe Morin, President of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business, has been busy since last week’s announcement that Nortel intends to sell the business.  Earlier this week, Philippe did a “mini media tour,” talking to multiple media pubs about Nortel’s plans to divest the business.  Below are links to the resulting articles, as well as a few nuggets that I’ve pulled from each.

Network World’s Jim Duffy talked to Philippe Morin yesterday and wrote this article — “Nortel looks to software as it shops Metro Ethernet unit.”  The article focuses on the overall shift for Nortel to “a more software-driven business model.”  …

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Is there an Internet traffic jam?   Is one coming?  And would you know what it would look like if you saw it?

While the debate on if the Internet is running out of bandwidth rages on, Nortel has teamed up with InternetTrafficReport.com to create an interactive demo called “Experience 40G” that shows what an actual Internet traffic jam might look or sound like.

Using this interactive website, you can view the average latency and packet loss for Internet networks in various global regions over the last 24 hours.  The tool also provides an overall “score” from 0 to 100, based on overall network performance.  See below for a shot of …

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Nortel CTO John Roese was a speaker at this week’s GigaOM Mobilize conference in San Francisco.  John talked on-stage with GigaOM founder Om Malik.

You can see the entire Q&A on the GigaOM site here.

The Q&A started on the topic of Hyperconnectivity, then quickly moved to 4G and technologies like LTE.

John had a few interesting comments.  When asked what the “killer app” would be for 4G, John responded: “The killer application in the 4G world is the fact that now you will be able to take every application that you’ve had in the wired world and deploy that in a mobile context. And then everything across the communication ecosystem will just be an Internet app.”

Another intersting comment came in …

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Philippe Morin, Nortel President of Metro Ethernet NetworksPhilippe Morin is the president of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business.  With yesterday’s announcement on the intent to find a buyer for Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business, his insight and opinions obviously became of increased interest to those following Nortel.

Yesterday, Philippe talked to Phil Harvey of Light Reading, the leading industry pub for coverage of the optical market.  You can read the entire Q&A with Light Reading on their website here.  Below are a few excerpts of various questions and answers from the interview.

Light Reading: Why is Nortel selling its Metro Ethernet Networks group?

Philippe Morin: The reason we’re …

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As you would expect, there has been a ton of coverage from yesterday’s Nortel news.  Since I obviously can’t include all the coverage, I figured I’d pull some quotes that have shown up in various articles from the last day.

Multiple news outlets pulled this Mike Z quote directly from the conference call: “The status quo is not an option for Nortel.”
This Mike Z quote from the call was also picked up several times: “We understand this is a pivotal moment for Nortel.”
In an interview with Reuters, George Riedel said that Nortel will seek “some form of partnership that would either de-risk the investment or improve the revenue footprint” in the wireless sector.
In an interview with the Globe & Mail, …

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A key part of today’s Nortel news was the announcement of the intent to explore the divestiture of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business. This signals a shift in strategy for Nortel. George Riedel, Nortel’s Chief Strategy Officer, is central to this strategy. Yesterday, I asked George for his thoughts on the news, and what the potential sale of Nortel’s MEN business will mean for Nortel.

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Nortel Chief Strategy Officer George Riedel

Q: Nortel is announcing a major change in strategic direction.  Why?

George Riedel: Three reasons 1) We have a very attractive asset in a strongly performing MEN business  2) This optical/carrier Ethernet segment of the industry needs consolidation and …

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This morning Nortel issued this press release with two significant pieces of news:

Nortel has announced the intention to divest its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business.
Nortel has announced a preliminary view on 3Q08 results (ending Sept 30), and revised its full-year 2008 outlook.

After listening in on Mike Z and Pavi Binning’s conference call on the news, and reading some of the internal communications sent to Nortel employees, I wanted to give a couple of my thoughts and observations on the news.

Obviously, the news of our revised financial outlook for 2008 is disappointing. As Mike Z stated on the conference call, “We are certainly disappointed that we are not going to meet our 2008 targets which were announced earlier in …

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Just a quick note to everyone on what I’m going to try to do with this Buzzboard blog over the next few days. Today’s news is obviously big, and I’m sure it is going to generate a lot of questions, comments and discussion from you.

In order to set some expectations and guidelines, I wanted to quickly outline a few topics that I will not be able (or allowed) to address:

Speculation about possible future Nortel moves, including restructuring or cost reduction initiatives, and speculation on the potential divestiture of Nortel’s MEN business (including time frame or terms relating to such potential sale).
Speculation on Nortel’s financial results or financial guidance.
Speculation about Nortel’s stock price, or how today’s news might affect Nortel’s …

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Nortel this morning has issued this press release with two significant pieces of news:

Nortel has announced the intent to “explore a divestiture” of its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business.
Nortel has announced a preliminary view on 3Q08 results (ending Sept 30), and revised its full-year 2008 outlook.

The MEN business, which is led by Philippe Morin, includes Nortel’s optical business (including the 40/100gig solution that’s been making news in recent months) and Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet business.  The release states that Nortel intends to explore the divestiture (the sale) of the MEN business for the “monetization of this asset”, which the press release highlights as “a premium asset with a highly differentiated offering.”

On the financial side, the press release …

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Nortel today announced two industry firsts for 40gig optical.  Nortel announced a 40gig win with Bell Canada, the first Canadian carrier deployment of 40G. Nortel also announced a 40gig win with Alaska Communications Systems (ACS), the first-ever 40gig deployment in Alaska.

Bell Canada will be upgrading their existing 10gig routes to 40gig for their major Internet corridors — the Toronto to Chicago, Toronto to Montreal, and Montreal to New York routes (two thirds of content delivered to Bell Internet customers comes via Chicago and New York City links). ACS will deploy a Nortel 40G solution for the terrestrial portion of an undersea fiber-optic cable from Alaska to Oregon to connect Alaska with the lower 48 states.

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