The Nortel patents auction saga took another twist Wednesday when Canadian Industry Minister Christian Paradis said that his government will hold an investigation into the sale to establish whether it complies with the terms of the Investment Canada Act.
The bunfight for Nortel’s patent chest concluded yesterday, with Chief Strategy Officer George Riedel’s announcement that “following a very robust auction”, the winning bid came from a buyer too big for even Google to take on. Following months of speculation and a $900m kick-off bid from Mountain View, the booty has gone to a consortium that reads like a Who’s Who of the tech industry: Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, RIM and Sony. Even with names like that in the mix, the $4.5bn price paid is still pretty eye-watering or, as Nortel’s Riedel preferred to put it, “unprecedented.”
Fading giant Nortel has postponed the sale of its extensive patent portfolio, due to a “significant level of interest”. The company had planned to flog the assets this coming Monday, June 20, but has delayed the auction process until June 27, as it assesses considerable interest in the 6,000 or so patents and applications.
Microsoft has joined HP, Motorola Mobility and Nokia in a growing line of tech companies opposed to Google’s proposed $900m purchase of Nortel’s patent assets. According to Redmond, a 2006 deal means that Microsoft has a “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free licence to all of Nortel’s patents” and that this agreement is binding regardless of who buys the intellectual property.
As interest in defunct kit maker Nortel’s patent portfolio heightens, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) is reported to be taking a close interest in the bidders. Apple is the latest company reported to be interested in making a purchase after Google opened bidding with a $900m offer in April. Now the DoJ is said to be concerned that the patents will be used to stymie competition in the telecoms sector.
Google’s bid to buy $900m worth of Nortel patents and patent applications was approved on Monday. The planned sale required the approval of courts overseeing Nortel’s bankruptcy proceedings in Canada and the US. Under the terms of the auction, other parties may submit bids until June 13th, with the auction taking place on June 20th. Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009.
Squeezing the last drops of value out of its remaining assets, fading giant Nortel this week won approval to sell its block of IPv4 addresses to Microsoft for an estimated $7.5m.
Nortel Networks is to continue its post-bankruptcy asset sell-off, announcing the sale of its remaining patent portfolio to Google. The search giant is said to have offered $900m in cash in a “stalking horse” arrangement that could yet see another bidder come in with a higher offer. The patents in question are said to include both granted and pending applications covering wireless, 4G/LTE, data networking, optical, voice, social networking and internet, among others
There are still titbits of the Nortel carcass to be had, with Ericsson this weekend striking a bargain to acquire the Canadian firm’s Multi-Service Switch business (MSS), boosting its presence in the CDMA market.
The carcass of fallen Canadian giant Nortel continues to be picked over, with Swedish vendor Ericsson announcing that it has acquired the certain assets of the Carrier Networks division of Nortel relating to the GSM business in the US and Canada.
It looks like carrier network specialist Ciena will emerge as the winner of Nortel’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets, following an extended auction that took place over the weekend.
Canadian vendor Nortel has delayed the next stage of its fire sale until later this week, giving potential bidders for its Optical Networking and Carrier Ethernet businesses and extra few days to get bids together.
Carrier network specialist Ciena has forged an agreement with Nortel to acquire the exiting Canadian firm’s optical networking and carrier Ethernet assets for $390m in cash and ten million shares of Ciena common stock estimated to be worth a further $131m.
Nortel, the fading star of the telecoms world, said late Wednesday it is planning to sell off its GSM and GSM-R (GSM for railways) assets via an open auction process.
The Nortel fire sale continues with the company this week announcing the auction of its Carrier Networks Packet Core assets.
It looks like enterprise networking firm Avaya has emerged as the winning bidder for Nortel’s own corporate communications unit, with an offer of close to $1bn.
Two bidders have tabled offers for the enterprise networking business of collapsing Canadian kit vendor Nortel, ahead of the auction scheduled for Friday.
During its swan song, Canadian vendor Nortel has teamed up with Korean manufacturer LG to demonstrate a 3GPP standards compliant data handover between a LTE network and a CDMA network.
A subsea cable outage in Southeast Asia has prompted analysts to note the central but underappreciated roles undersea cable networks play in global commerce.
Mike Zafirovski, the president and CEO of Nortel Networks has announced his resignation from the once mighty firm, effective immediately.
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