Nortel Goes Bankrupt By Rob Gillies, Associated Press Writer Manufacturing.Net - January 14, 2009 TORONTO (AP) -- Telecommunications equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp. filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the U.S. on Wednesday, becoming the first major technology company to take that step in this global downturn. Facing a sharp drop in orders from phone companies, Nortel filed for court protection a day before it was due to make a debt payment of $107 million. Protection from its creditors would give the company more opportunities to explore restructuring options or sell off assets. The long-struggling Toronto-based company said in a release that it had been in the process of a turnaround since late 2005, but "the global financial crisis and recession have compounded Nortel's financial challenges and directly impacted its ability to complete this transformation." "Nortel must be put on a sound financial footing once and for all," Nortel's chief executive, Mike Zafirovski, said in the statement. As of its last quarterly filing, Nortel had $4.5 billion in debt and $2.4 billion in cash. Nortel said Wednesday its cash position remains $2.4 billion, but it did not immediately reveal its total assets or its debt load. However, the filing in Delaware revealed that one unsecured creditor alone, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., is owed nearly $4 billion. During the 1990s telecom and Internet boom, Nortel had more than 95,000 employees and a market capitalization of $297 billion. At one point in 2000 it accounted for one-third of the market value on the entire Toronto Stock Exchange. When trading closed Tuesday, before the bankruptcy filing halted trading in Nortel's shares Wednesday, Nortel's market value was just $155 million. Its work force was down to about 30,000 people in Nortel's last update. More:
Here in AT&T Southeast, we have a good deal of their equipment in service. I am familiar with the DMS-100 switch for providing dial tone from central offices for tens of thousands of POTS lines--there's a smaller DMS-10 in the marketplace, for smaller COs or big PBXs. (I haven't been trained to service it yet). The Nortel DMS-100 is in about a third of our COs: others are the Siemens EWSD, and the Lucent 5ESS. COtech
Sad to hear, but can't say you didn't see it coming . Nortel has been in bad shape for a while. I think their failure to merge (ala Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia-Siemens) left them out in the cold. A merger could have blew some wind into their sails. Motorola also failed to merge, and is now getting split up...hmmm...."Nortel-Motorola"? :headscrat ...nah, too late I guess :O I think Ericsson was the only vendor big enough to stand alone and survive... ....and what exactly does going bankrupt mean? What about existing support/service contracts? ...how does it help to preserve a company? ...and last but not least: anyone know where theres any good Nortel fire-sales? They make some nice SIP phones :browani:
Farewell Nortel ...I'll miss your Meridian office phone (as it was the best landline phone I've ever owned).
They're not actually as bad off as it sounds. They've still got a decent amount of capital. The credit markets forced them to declare now while they've got the money to reorganize. If I was them I'd try and put the squeeze on my creditors. They've got some good businesses whether they run them or sell them. I wouldn't count them out.
They have done this before. They made some dumb business moves. They canned their UMTS unit and sold it to Lucent and then dumped alot of money in Wimax development. When Cingular had a bunch of Nortel equipment and requested some upgrades and Nortel did come thru so Cingular changed out the equipment to Ericsson. Nortel also had a good oppourtunity in my area to replace the equipment at about 50 towers and only need to make some software changes to support a GSM extended cell but they said they dont support it so they lost that contract. Nortel makes good equipment but there support is not always stellar.
Nortel has a good PBX but their tech support is not the group it was 10 years ago. If you have a voice mail out at a hospital on the weekend they do not consider it a major failure because the PBX is not down. So they will not return your calls until Monday. If you lose voice mail at a hospital IT IS A MAJOR FAILURE. Hospitals really use voice menus. For really in depth troubles it takes weeks to get their design team involved.
I'm with you there Mobile Mike on the Meridian's......I too agree, that, for me, was the best landline deskphone I EVER had... Bummer Nortel...
