There are a lot of Telcos that depend upon Nortel - what is going to happen to Nortel and what will happen to their customers?
I think that the bankruptcy will ultimately force the company to re-think eliminating and streamlining a variety of product lines, of course the layoff's that will follow with those decisions too.
I also think there may be a number or Telco, Network Consulting, Systems Integration and After Market resellers (to fight for what Nortel will lose) in the way of some past to current customers.
There could also be some acquisition of top talent at Nortel in strategic areas recruited to companies like Microsoft (using OCS and Unified Messaging) and other companies that tout virtual workplace solutions with VoIP. Especially with an ever more growing need to go virtual and reduce/eliminate travel costs/time and to consolidate and unify….voice/data/video platforms….to work with older and newer software and hardware.
We will see what the markets will bear and who will be strong enough to make the best strategic plans and how they can best be executed to the field in Q1/2 '09 and beyond.
Nortel has no future. It will not be able to restructure and rearrange its affairs under bankruptcy protection any more than it was able to do so before.
Nortel is a completely mismanaged company, under a different set of managers, ever since it became a public company. It was the R&S arm of Bell Canada and then spun off. It has never ever produced a profit since it went public. What does that tell you.
Whenever it has faced challenges, it has made knee-jerk lay offs which have never been sufficient. And in order to win business, it constantly underbids, thus never turning a profit.
It will be no different now under current management. The company simply has no management and marketing ability, and its technology is no longer competitive, if it ever was.
So despite all the management blunders, such as Roth's leveraged buy-outs in the dot-com boom era, and the outright fraud by the next CEO, this is an incompetent company that simply does not know how to manage its affairs effectively.
Nortel should and will fail. So will Alcatel-Lucent.
The future in this space belongs to Huawei and other low-cost Chinese producers, with which Nortel and A-L will never compete.
As to their equally-dinosaur telco clients, there is an abundance of supply, and they will obtain whatever they need from Huawei.
This entire industry in USA-Canada and Europe is extremely badly managed, from telcos to gear makers. They have been slow and in great extent have never transitioned to the new world, and many will deservedly fall by the wayside.
About the Author:
Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including
Business VoIP Solution and
DS3 Bandwidth. Michael also authors
Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news,
tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.
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423
Date Published :
Feb 13 2009