Nortel Innovations To Power Hyperconnected Era

OTTAWA - During today’s Investor Technology Day, Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] outlined its plans to meet increasing demand for the new era of communications, where anything that can be connected will be connected.


Nortel President and CEO Mike Zafirovski presented a comprehensive strategy to lead this next era by delivering innovations that address the key challenges of Hyperconnectivity.

Hyperconnectivity is a trend which encompasses person-to-person communication, person-to-machine and machine-to-machine. It is fueling huge increases in bandwidth demand because of the complexity, diversity and integration of new applications and devices using the network.

“We have focused our R&D efforts on specific high-impact areas where we have the potential to lead. Our strategy will allow us to leapfrog our competition and deliver game-changing innovations that give our customers powerful, world-class technology that improves their performance and bottom line,” said Zafirovski. “This will allow us to win new customers and drive long-term revenue opportunities.”

Zafirovski discussed how customers like BT, Craig Wireless, Kroger and the New York Times are using the latest in Nortel technology innovation to drive real business advantage.

Nortel has aligned its R&D strategy to address three key industry battles: 4G mobile broadband, Carrier Ethernet and Unified Communications. Nortel will continue to develop technologies and invest in R&D efforts designed to drive the Company’s leadership in building powerful networks of the future while making daily communications and business processes richer, more dynamic and connected.

“Nortel is an industry leader in this new era of communications that promises a rate of technology innovation far surpassing any other era in recent history,” added Zafirovski. “Hyperconnectivity is happening today. To businesses this can mean massive productivity gains, new ways of conducting business, even new revenue sources.”

Nortel CTO John Roese, who hosted the event from Nortel’s R&D center in Ottawa, Canada, discussed the economics and costs associated with Hyperconnectivity as well as Nortel’s competitive advantage in preparing carriers and enterprises to benefit from the opportunities and overcome the challenges of Hyperconnectivity.

“Nortel is in the best position to take on the challenge of Hyperconnectivity. No other company can match our expertise across wireless and wireline, enterprise and carrier, IT and telecom,” said Roese. “We are in the best position to lead this significant industry shift.”

As part of the event, analysts and media had the opportunity to view several advanced demonstrations including Fixed-Mobile Convergence, 4G WiMAX and LTE, and Provider Backbone Transport and 40-Gigabit optical transport innovations.

Nortel also demonstrated a prototype of an emergency response solution that will automatically assemble emergency response teams (ERT), establish required communication channels and ensure that vital data is available where required. This will help industry, governments and municipalities respond to disasters and emergency situations more quickly and efficiently. The demonstration leveraged intelligent sensor technologies and Nortel’s industry-leading 4G broadband, wireless LAN and multimedia unified communications to provide a powerful hyperconnected network for emergency responders.

In addition, Nortel today announced a new WiMAX win, Chunghwa Telecom, and a new portfolio of Multimedia Services to provide further proof of Nortel’s leadership.

Chunghwa Telecom is leveraging Nortel’s WiMAX technology to provide Taiwan’s first WiMAX healthcare network. The new network will support emergency medical assistance and patient care services wherever it is required outside of a medical facility by providing remote outpatient registration, remote patient monitoring and virtual healthcare services.

Nortel’s new Multimedia Services give enterprises tools like video conferencing and high-definition telepresence that can save time and money on travel by making collaboration over time and distance just as effective as face-to-face meetings. These application services are designed to unify video and audio conferencing, webcasting and web collaboration, enabling seamless connectivity for employees, suppliers and customers in a collaborative virtual environment.