Nortel Buzzboard

This week, Nortel joins other vendors in the industry for two carrier / service provider focused events — WiMAX World in Chicago and the Broadband World Forum (BBWF) in Brussels.

WiMAX World bills itself as the world’s largest wireless and mobile broadband event focusing solely on WiMAX — with over 8,500 attendees last year.  At this year’s event, Nortel will have multiple session speakers, as well as a booth (#801) where Nortel will highlight its recently announced strategic partnership with Alvarion.

Scott Wickware, the VP and GM for Nortel’s WiMAX business, is a featured keynote speaker at the event speaking on “Revolutionizing Wireless Broadband.”  See below for additional Nortel speakers at the …

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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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This week in Berlin, Germany, the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) is hosting the Carrier Ethernet World Congress conference and expo.

One highlight at the event is what’s being called “the world’s largest and most advanced live, public Carrier Ethernet multi-vendor interoperability showcase,” where Nortel and dozens of other vendors around the world will show the broad interoperability of their Carrier Ethernet products.

As part of this interop network, Nortel will include its Provider Backbone Bridges (PBB) solution, as well as our implementation of the emerging Provider Backbone Bridge - Traffic Engineering (PBB-TE) standard.  PBB was recently standardized as IEEE 802.1ah, while PBB-TE (which Nortel also calls PBT) is still in the standardization …

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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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