Nortel is now officially dismatled

[Peter Gibbons]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/090916/business/cbusiness_us_nortel

It's kind of sad that there is no fairness in the process.

The Canadian governments ( federal and provincial ) payed more per capita than the US government to save GM and Chrysler bit didn't do anything for Nortel.

Since I got my first decent contract at Nortel ( and my only employer payed on site massage  ) I have a soft spot for the company.

When the group I was working in was dismantled to save a few million while the company spent hundreds and hundreds of millions buying companies at the peek of the stock market I just though this must be a smart decision by tough and smart executives. Now I think these guy didn't have a clue what they were doing. Later on the people that helped drive the company further into the ground made their nice bonuses:


http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/06/24/bonuses-for-dismantling-nortel/">http://www.allaboutnortel.com/2009/06/24/bonuses-for-dismantling-nortel/

[The Gorn]

Sorry to read that a client you liked bit the dust.

We in the US aren't that familiar with Nortel, it's not a household name here. Is it fair to say that Nortel is kind of like Western Electric+Bell Labs in its prominence?

[datagirl]

Not so fast, GB.

The local POTS where I worked had all Nortel switching equipment and operator consoles.  They had a big tech center in Dallas metro area, where we used to go for training.  I remember one such trip where they were selling the source code to one of the "robot-operator" programs that they were no longer supporting, and we were learning how to support it in-house.  One of the first things they said was we needed a particular discontinued version of MS C++, or the code wouldn't compile.

Our little mom n pop telco preached Nortel - good... AT&T - bad.

[The Gorn]

Got cha. Thanks for the feedback.

[Origisaurus]

We in the US aren't that familiar with Nortel, it's not a household name here. Is it fair to say that Nortel is kind of like Western Electric+Bell   Labs in its prominence?

If memory serves, Nortel began life as Northern Electric, the Canadian counterpart of Western Electric.  Mid 70s, it morphed into Northern Telecom and acquired 2 (that I recall) US manufacturers of telecom equipment.  One of the acquired companies was HQ'd in Ann Arbor, and I once had a tour of the plant.

[The Gorn]

Thx for the overview. I knew it was basically the "Canadian Bell" equipment manufacturer.

I finally got your new signature... timeless wisdom, that.

[pxsant]

"One of the acquired companies was HQ'd in Ann Arbor"

You are correct.  That company was Sycor and I worked for them when they were acquired by NT.  The second company I believe was Data 100.  They manufactured RJE workstations and heavy duty drum and line printers.

[codger]

When did you work for Sycor? A colleague of mine, back in the 1970's was project lead for an implementation of a bunch of Sycor mini computers. As I recall, they were pretty capable and advanced for the time. I also remember that Datapoint was a fierce competitor of theirs in the mini market.

[pxsant]

I don't remember the exact dates but it was in the 1975 - 1977 time frame.  I was a district manager on the East coast.

Their mini's were actually based on the 8080 as I recall.  They also used a heavily modified version of Cobol and their own proprietary data entry language (TAL??).   They were very capable for the time and were used by many large corporations.  The auto industry used them at dealerships to capture sales data to send back to HQ.

Funny story.  We used to display at various shows at the time.  After one show, the sales manager was all drunked up and was bringing some equipment back to the office in a van.  This stuff was on wheels and the guy did not tie it down.  He went through the center of a NJ circle (not around but through) and that system came forward exactly between the driver and passenger seats and buried itself in the dash.  It would have killed someone if it hit either the driver or passenger.  I remember trying to salvage parts from the junk equipment.

It was an interesting company until the NT acquisition.

[BrownsRBack]

Nortel had a rather large presence in Dallas up in the "telecom corridor" along I-75 in the Richardson area.  I remember flying next to a guy who was a tight end at Texas Tech and was now working for Nortel.  I think I was flying to the SV area going to some Sun-Netscape training at the Netscape offices.  Anyway I remember the dude not seeming like the brightest bulb.  ild

I wonder if that campus has been taken over.  Here is an old article about the 34 acre/3000 employee complex.  I just don't know if they are still running it.

http://www.wfaa.com/share...14_wz_nortel.c9ce05.html

[David Randolph]

The Nortel facility in Richardson still was holding 3,000 jobs as of the first of the year.

 

However, many of the rest of the companies in the area are gone. The biggest employer in that "Telecom Corridor" is now a health insurance company.