TORONTO – This week, Nortel president and CEO Mike Zafirovski told customers and investors that the company will launch a new strategic initiative by concentrating on super-fast Ethernet networks essential to handling the coming growth of bandwidth-hungry video applications.
Calling it "Metro Ethernet Networks", the new group will be led by Philippe Morin as president.
"Nortel’s future depends on our continued leadership in innovation and with our new Metro Ethernet Networks we’re bringing our best technologies together, backed by an initial incremental investment in R&D," said Zafirovski. "In his previous position as general manager, Optical, Philippe grew the business approximately 24% last year to US$1.2 billion. I have every confidence he will build on that leadership and momentum through Metro Ethernet Networks."
"With IPTV, IMS and other applications evolving quickly, service providers will face huge bandwidth challenges across all networks – wireless, wireline and cable. Metro Ethernet Networks is the first step in getting Nortel in front of that curve to win in this critical new space in the market," said Zafirovski.
Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Networks business strategy is based on the increasing reliance on Ethernet as the standard protocol for both LAN and WAN communications to break the bandwidth bottleneck between high-speed fibre-optic networks and metro networks serving consumers and business.
In addition, the new group will focus on wireless capabilities, using Nortel’s Metro Ethernet solution to ensure such applications as high-bandwidth video provide real-time speed and quality to mobile devices.
