DJK

Nortel Looking at 3 Serious Bids for Metro Ethernet Business

There are essentially 4 main business divisions at Nortel; Enterprise, Optical, Wireless, and Wireline. Since the days of Roth, Enterprise was always the ugly, redheaded step child. Nortel identified itself with the other divisions because those businesses reflected the company's origin (Carrier).

But even in neglect, Enterprise has always been a break even to slightly profitable division for Nortel. All the other divisions have been loss centers since the Internet bust in '01 (especially Wireline). The lure and promise of "billion dollar deals" was just to enticing for Nortel to ignore. So Nortel continuously pumped money into these losing endeavors in the hopes for the "big pay-off."

But Nortel needs money now. They can't afford to wait for the big pay-off. The Enterprise market overall is a larger market with a much more diverse customer base. So it's more stable and the margins are far better. Which is exactly what Nortel needs right now.

Now the interesting part will be if the Enterprise division proves successful now Nortel will focus on it. Or will that cause it to start failing too.