Nortel News: Verizon Embraces LTE, SEC Deal With Ex-Execs

Verizon Embraces LTE

Verizon Wireless’ (VZ) decision to use long-term evolution technology could make life, well, interesting for Nortel (NT).

LTE is technology supported by the GSM community - a market where Nortel has a minor presence. At first blush, this suggests that Verizon’s decision could be bad news for Nortel.

The silver lining, however, is CDMA (the technology used within Verizon’s network) and LTE can play nice together. This means Nortel, which signed a five-year, $2-billion agreement to provide Verizon with CDMA equipment a year ago, could actually benefit from Verizon’s embrace of LTE.

Scott Wickware, Nortel’s VP of marketing and strategy for carrier networks and Nortel, told TMCnet that “Nortel is looking forward to helping Verizon Wireless enhance its current CDMA network, which already offers innovative mobile multimedia services, and explore a seamless evolution path to 4G LTE and true mobile broadband for their subscribers.”

SEC Deal With Nortel Ex-Execs

Before anyone gets too excited about what the SEC has done, it has not struck a deal with ex-CEO Frank Dunn, ex-CFO Doug Beatty or ex-controller Michael Gollogly.

It has, however, reached an agreement in principle to settle a lawsuit against Craig Johnson, James Kinney and Kenneth Taylor. The trio, along with Douglas Hamilton, had civil fraud charges made against them earlier this year by the SEC in which the SEC alleged they were part of an accounting scheme that cooked the books to trigger a lucrative bonus plan.

For more, check out the Globe & Mail.

Last month, Dunn made a court filing in which he claims he “rescued” Nortel, and that the accounting issues were mistakes rather than fraud.