TORONTO – Canadian telecom industry insider Jeff Wiener has taken the unusual step of writing to the U.S. Department of Justice to ask them to allow the acquisition of Nortel’s enterprise solutions business by Avaya to proceed unobstructed.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Justice received a letter from the president of St. Louis-based Sotel Systems, a privately-held telecom-equipment reseller, and a verbal complaint from the president of Florida’s Access Communications, asking them to block the proposed deal due to anti- competitive concerns.
But according to Wiener, whose company Digitcom.ca is a business partner of Avaya, “any competitive concern is without merit”.
“The CPE (customer premise equipment) industry is going through a paradigm shift with a VERY rapid migration away from the CPE market toward alternate means of communication, including the four threats listed above”, Wiener writes, identifying Microsoft, Skype, Google and hosted VoIP as the threats.
“These are the technologies that are changing our industry. The fact that Avaya is acquiring assets as part of Nortel’s bankruptcy protection process is proof the CPE industry needs some consolidation to better prepare for the future", he continued.
Wiener also urged a quick approval of the acquisition, saying that “delaying this will only reduce the value of the asset being sold”.
Click here to read Wiener’s full letter, which he has also posted on The Telecom Blog.
– Lesley Hunter
