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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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’s much ballyhooed 40gig optical solution has a new customer. This morning we announced that Southern Cross was deploying Nortel’s 40gig technology. Southern Cross is an independent bandwidth wholesaler, and its network provides the major link for Internet traffic from Australia, New Zealand and Fiji to the US, as well as linking Hawaii to the US mainland.

Southern Cross is a longtime Nortel optical customer, and this latest announcement shows an interesting evolution of their optical network through Nortel. Southern Cross originally selected Nortel back in 2001 to provide optical equipment for the U.S. terrestrial part of its network. Then two years ago Southern Cross started deploying …

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Today, two different articles take a look at areas where Nortel is looking to see growth over the next few years.  Both provide an interesting read:

The first article is a Q&A in the Business Standard in India with recently-appointed Nortel India Managing Director Hitesh Lokhandwala and VP of marketing in Asia Rick Seeto.  They discuss Nortel’s growth goals for Asia, the move of R&D and resources to the region, and some of our recent local customer wins. 

The second article is in this morning’s edition of USA Today, a feature article that talks about the growing bandwidth shortage in the U.S. due to the rise of high-bandwidth apps like HD video.  This article takes a little different angle than others I’ve …

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There’s been quite a bit of media coverage on Nortel over the last few days so I figured I’d summarize it with links to some of the more interesting articles.

Yesterday’s wireless news about Nortel wins with BSNL, U.S Cellular and Sky Link generated a lot of interest, including articles in Computerworld, Globe & Mail, Reuters, and the Ottawa Citizen.

Outside of the wireless news coverage, there have been a couple of other articles of interest:

Philippe Morin, president of Metro Ethernet Networks for Nortel, was interviewed by the Canadian Press for an article here on how the future move to online HD video will put increasing pressure on an already strained Internet backbone.  …

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