Nortel Buzzboard

Nortel has been active this week at WiMAX World in Chicago, talking to customers, media and analysts about its 4G and WiMAX strategy.  One of the more interesting demos on the Nortel booth has been the Nortel WiMAX Car, a smart fortwo mini-car that has been outfitted with WiMAX access, Dolby 5.1 and an in-dash video screen.

Nortel’s Scott Clark gives you a peek at the Nortel WiMAX Car in the below video.

Also below, see a video of another demo from the Nortel booth at the show.  This time Nortel’s Scott Clark shows how WiMAX can provide the freedom for gamers to play online from anywhere.  In …

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Nortel joins other vendors this week in Chicago for WiMAX World.  This is the first wireless-focused industry event that Nortel has participated in since it’s recent strategic partnership with Alvarion was announced earlier this summer — so there is probably a little bit of extra interest in what Nortel is doing at the show (Alvarion has a booth at the show as well, and Nortel has several booth-to-booth demos running with them).

One item that Nortel is showing at the booth, and that was highlighted in a press release today, is a focus on VoIP and unified communications over WiMAX.  On the booth, Nortel is showing off some of it’s collaboration …

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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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I cam across a few interesting articles today that were related to Nortel that I thought might be of interest:

[Updated: Today there was another article came out about the WiMAX market — this one from Fierce Broadband Wireless about the conflicting messages coming from WiMAX vendors with their recent quarterly results.  Some vendors are talking about a delay in WiMAX deployments while others (like Alvarion) are meeting or surpassing expectations.]
Seeking Alpha has this article on Alvarion, Nortel’s recently announced WiMAX partner. The article talks a little about Alvarion’s new relationship with Nortel, but mainly focuses on why they are bullish on Alvarion’s prospects.
Speaking of WiMAX, Light Reading has this article on how the UK government’s …

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If you saw this morning’s news that Russian service provider Comstar was deploying a Nortel WiMAX solution in Moscow, you might have asked yourself “I thought Nortel got out of WiMAX.” And I wouldn’t blame you — shortly after we announced a strategic relationship with Alvarion that would allow Nortel to focus our R&D resources on the rapidly emerging LTE market, a few articles started appearing that boiled the news down to a snappy one-liner.

“Nortel ditches WiMAX” was a popular one, with various equally cringe-worthy examples being “Nortel dumps WiMAX” and “Nortel Flunks WiMAX.”

Of course, Nortel has not “ditched WiMAX” at all — we are working with Alvarion for WiMAX access solutions. Nortel is still dedicating resources …

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Over the weekend, Alex Lewis had this interesting post on the hyperconnectivity.com blog about the possibility of AT&T looking to deploy WiMAX. This is one of several recent articles that indicate a possible bright spot for WiMAX, which has been taking a PR drubbing of late in comparison to LTE technology.

Unstrung, which has been following AT&T’s WiMAX activities closely for some time now, had this new article Friday indicating that AT&T might be considering WiMAX for rural U.S. deployments, especially as rising copper costs make rural DSL deployments more expensive.

The article also highlights that AT&T already has a limited deployment of WiMAX technology in Alaska using 2.3 GHz equipment from Alvarion. Alvarion, of …

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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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There were a ton of articles that came out from yesterday’s news. Here’s my list of the more insightful ones:

Reuters has a nice summary of the news with quotes from the IR day event and several analysts, as does the Globe & Mail.
Telephony did a nice feature on the LTE/WiMAX news that included an interview with Scott Wickware.
Light Reading provided probably the most in-depth coverage of the Carrier Ethernet win with Verizon.
Barron’s debated which piece of Nortel news was responsible for the stock price increase.
The LTE vs. WiMAX debate raged on, with Network World talking about what it means to Nortel, and Tech Observer talking about what it means to the industry.
Total …

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Scott Wickware, new GM for Nortel’s WiMAX businessYesterday was a big news day for Nortel, so let’s start sorting through the details of some of it and what the news means for Nortel’s direction.

The item that got the most attention yesterday was Nortel’s news in the 4G wireless space. Nortel announced a change in R&D direction here, shifting it’s main R&D efforts to 4G LTE to address that market’s accelerating time schedule. At the same time Nortel announced a strategic WiMAX agreement with Alvarion where they will become Nortel’s supplier for mobile WiMAX base stations as part of an end-to-end WiMAX solution.

[UPDATED: Watch …

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I’m still working through all the media coverage from today’s Nortel news. I’ll be spending most of tomorrow focusing on going through the news, and highlighting the more interesting coverage.

Until then, I thought one of today’s articles was of particular interest. This article in Telephony talks about Nortel’s move to focus it’s future R&D resources on 4G LTE, and how the new relationship with Alvarion will help Nortel still play in the WiMAX market.

New GM of WiMAX solutions Scott Wickware is interviewed, and suggests that the Alvarion relationship began through a little matchmaking from one of Nortel’s customers:

“One notable customer suggested we get together with Alvarion,” Wickware said. “They felt …

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