As Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) edges toward oblivion, people are starting to think about life post-Nortel. What will Canada’s high-tech sector be like without thousands of high-paying employees? What will life be like for thousands of pensioners whose benefits are shrinking or disappearing? How will Canada’s R&D activity be impacted?

Another interesting issue is whether Nortel’s demise will have a major effect on Canada’s start-up landscape. In Canada – and probably many countries around the world – one of the great offshoots has been Nortel employees who have left the fold to create their own start-ups. Armed with experience and expertise, these entrepreneurs have played a key role in fueling the start-up landscape, even though they might not get the attention that highlights their time with Nortel.

The National Post has been running a series of feature stories exploring the demise of Nortel (NRTLQ.PK). It will interesting to read Monday’s installment, which is focused on ex-CEO John Roth, who decided to depart Nortel in 2001 just before the telecom boom started to meltdown.

Roth retired to bucolic Caledon, Ont. with a $130-million (most of it from stock options that been steadily rewarded to him by Nortel’s generous board) where he has kept an extremely low profile.

Nokia Siemens (NOK, SI) may be making a bid for Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) Metro Ethernet network (MEN) business, which would put it in competition with Ciena, which has made a $521-million “stalking horse” bid.

Speculation about the bid comes on the heels of Nokia Siemens Rajeev Suri telling Reuters that the company is looking for well-priced and sensible acquisitions. Earlier this year, Nokia Siemens was outbid for Nortel’s CDMA wireless and LTE R&D unit by Ericsson (ERIC).

An interesting tidbit that I was remiss in highlighting in the Monitor’s 25th report is that 917 claims worth C$28-billion were filed against Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) and four other business units (Nortel Networks Global Corp., Nortel Networks International Corp., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Nortel Networks Technology Corp.) by the claims bar date of Sept. 30. Another 13 claims worth C$1.4 billion have been filed since the claim bar date.

Ernst & Young has issued the 25th Monitor’s Report. Of particular interest is the discussion about Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) patents, which could be worth several billion dollars.

After completing a review of the company's patents to determine what patents should be assigned to the buyers of its business units, Nortel determined there are about 3,400 residual patents that haven’t been assigned to the buyers of individual business units.

As Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) financial implosion starts to claw away at the pensions of former employees, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the pension packages given to recent CEOs. It is important to keep in mind that while the pension payments seem high, it’s probably not out of line with pensions given to CEOs who had worked for many other Fortune 500 companies.

Mike Zafirovski: Originally, Mike Z. was entitled to a “special lifetime annual pension benefit” of $500,000 that would kick in upon his termination as CEO, or after five years. In 2007, Zafirovski voluntarily requested the package be reduced to $355,000.

In many respects, it must be very strange for Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) employees to keep doing their jobs while the company’s different assets are being sold. I mean, how motivated or excited can you be when your employer is crumbling and the CEO has gone running off into the hills?

This take on the world struck me when hearing about Nortel’s presence at SUPERCOMM last week in Chicago in which Nortel aggressively waved the flag about some new products. It has to be an odd feeling to be manning the Nortel booth at a time when everyone knows Nortel is not going to exist for much longer. I suspect that if Nortel was handing out swag, it had to be considered as collector’s items.

The auction of Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) optical and Ethernet assets has overcome a hurdle after bankruptcy courts in the U.S. and Canada approved Ciena’s (CIEN) $521-million “stalking horse” bid. The approval came after the judges expressed some unhappiness with some of the details of the bid, including Ciena’s break-up fee.

“We understand that there were changes to the bidding procedures and a change to the termination provisions of the stalking horse agreement,” Nortel spokesman Bo Gowan told Canadian Press. “We do not have specific details on those changes at this time; however any modifications will be reflected in the court orders which will be publicly available.”

It will be interesting to see how much Nortel will get for its optical and Ethernet assets in the wake of Ciena’s $521-million “stalking horse” bid. Given what happened during the auctions for Nortel’s CDMA and enterprise assets, it’s entirely possible the optical and Ethernet assets could fetch $1-billion or more.

A key question will be how high Ciena is willing to go. With $455.7 million of cash and $607-million of short-term investments on its books, Ciena appears to have the financial flexibility to make a significantly higher bid.

Ciena (CIEN) issued a press release yesterday that it is in “advanced discussions” to acquire substantially all of the optical networking and carrier ethernet assets of Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) business, adding any agreements would be “subject to a competitive bidding process”.

But some alert AAN readers contend Ciena may have prematurely spilled the beans on just how far along the negotiations have gone. On Friday, Ciena apparently issued this press release, which suggests it had agreed to purchase “substantially all of the optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets of Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks” for $400 million in cash and 10 million shares, which are worth about $150-million.

Faced with a $3-billion tax billion from the U.S. Internal Revenue Agency, Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) has been told that it must prepare for a court date on Oct. 13 – yet another reason for Nortel’s lawyers to pick up some more fees.

According to Bloomberg News, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross has ordered the two two sides to meet tomorrow to talk about the information they need to exchange the trial.

For all the attention on Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) CDMA business, which was sold to Ericsson (ERIC) for $1.3-billion, most people are probably unaware that Nortel still has a GSM wireless business that had sales of $377-million during the first-half of the year.

Given that GSM has supplanted CDMA has the technology for most wireless carriers around the world, it will be interesting to see how much interest Nortel attracts for its GSM business, which was split off from the CDMA business earlier this year.

To date, Nortel’s asset sales (aka “The Nortel Garage Sale”) have been interesting but not terribly exciting unless you take into account the public temper tantrums that Research in Motion had after it wasn’t allowed to participate in the auction for Nortel’s CDMA wireless business and LTE R&D unit.

But it looks like things could get really interesting as the remaining parts of the Nortel’s empire go on the block. In particular, Nortel’s patent portfolio is likely going to attract a huge amount of attention and multiple bidders looking to buy parts or all of Nortel’s 5,000 or so patents, including the highly sought after LTE patents.

It looks the federal government has been listening to the growing number of critics who have been chirping away about how foreign buyers are picking up Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) assets with little opposition from Ottawa.

It may explain why the federal government has decided to review Avaya’s (AV) $915-million purchase of Nortel Networks Corp’s enterprise business – a move that comes after Ottawa recently declined to review Ericsson’s (ERIC) $1.13-billion acquisition of Nortel’s CDMA wireless business and LTE R&D unit.

In many respects, the beginning of the end for Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) happened a year ago when the company announced plans to sell its Metro Ethernet Network business – an asset many people considered to be Nortel’s crown jewel.

In theory, the plan was that MEN would pull in $1-billion to $2-billion, which would provide Nortel more financial flexibility so CEO Mike Z. could continue his restructuring plan. Unfortunately, the capital markets suddenly melted down, which caused spending on telecom equipment to decline, and valuations for telecom assets to drop.

Another day, another part of Nortel (NRTLQ.PK) to auction off to the highest bidder. This time, the company plans to sell the software assets of its carrier division.

An interesting part of the proposed sale is it includes non-patent intellectual property, equipment and other related assets.

It’s really interesting to see the growing amount of political huffing and puffing surrounding the demise of Nortel (NRTLQ.PK). The closer Nortel gets to extinction, the more enthusiastic that politicians get about proclaiming about how things could have been different if only better decisions had been made.

The latest example is federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff, who suggests he would change foreign investment rules to protect “flagship” Canadian companies such as Nortel, and how Prime Minister Stephen Harper “dropped the ball” when the government didn’t review Ericsson (ERIC) purchase of Nortel’s CDMA business and LTE R&D unit.

The Toronto Star published a silly editorial this past weekend suggesting that the federal government’s unwillingness to block Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) sale of its CDMA business to Ericsson (ERIC) is playing a key part in letting “Nortel slip from our grasp”.

The editorial declared that the decision shows that:

After the recent auction of Nortel’s (NRTLQ.PK) enterprise business was said and done, Siemens Communications (SI) lost by a measly $15-million – and the fact that its bid consisted of $700-million in cash and and IOU, while Avaya (AV) offered all cash.

But Siemens’ failure to win the auction was the last of many attempts it made to buy the enterprise business. According to an article in the Globe & Mail, Siemens approached Nortel last year about buying the business to create a $5-billion enterprise entity with strong footholds in Europe and North America.

Like AAN hasbeen saying all along, the Canadian government has given its approval to Ericsson’s (ERIC) $1.3 billion purchase of Nortel’s (NT) CDMA business and its LTE R&D unit.

“There are no grounds to believe this transaction could be injurious to Canada’s national security,” Industry Canada Minister Tony Clement said. “[Ericsson] has the resources and customer base necessary to bring Canadian innovation to market…. This deal is very beneficial to Canada.”