NSN reportedly bidding on Nortel assets

Nokia Siemens Networks has reportedly bid on a number of Nortel Network businesses, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The report says NSN has bid for Nortel's CDMA business, its Long Term Evolution assets along with voice services related gear, namely TDM switches and VoIP infrastructure.

In a recent interview with FierceWireless, Bruce Gustafson, vice president, Carrier Networks Strategic Marketing at Nortel, said that under bankruptcy regulations, Nortel's creditors are required to entertain such bids. If they are found to be more than what a particular business unit can generate on its own, a sale must move forward. Nortel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.

According to the WSJ report, speculation is that the money being offered for the Nortel businesses are believed to be low. Meanwhile, Gustafson admitted the company may not be winning any big contracts for LTE until Nortel's future is certain [1]. "It's hard for us to win a multi-year LTE deal until the bankruptcy is cleared up," Gustafson told FierceWireless. "If we have to take steps to make sure that we're over-rotating to support existing customers rather than bringing in new business, so be it."

For NSN, getting its hands on Nortel's CDMA business and LTE R&D would help the vendor gain a stronger foothold in the North American market, where CDMA technology has dominated, hence Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel have dominated. Verizon Wireless already passed up Nortel's LTE gear, citing the company's uncertainty, but it didn't discount the quality of the equipment. Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent subsequently won the LTE contracts. Many CDMA operators are looking to migrate to LTE and require vendors that have an expertise in both.

For more:
- check out the Wall Street Journal [2] (sub. req.)

Related articles:
Nortel watches as Ericsson capitalizes [1] on CDMA-to-LTE conversion
Nortel [3] confirms it may sell businesses
Private equity groups eye Motorola, Nortel [4] assets
Nortel [5] posts $2.14B loss in Q4
Nortel [6] cuts 3,200 jobs
[7]Nortel [7] deal with Radware worth only $17.65M