Earlier this week, I received an e-mail from a Nortel employee who wrote: "I find real value reading your blog, and always learn something, but what really bothers me are some of the comments that people leave, and why we as a company allow that. A lot of comments are [...]

A few dozen blogs ago, I wrote about the need to have both strategy and tactics to execute a successful business plan. That post was in response to some interesting comments that expressed concern that our day-to-day activity was not providing “instant gratification” to long-term market, company and industry challenges. [...]

When I took on the role of CTO for Nortel two years ago, I moved to Ottawa, which is home to Nortel’s largest site and the heart of much of the company’s R&D efforts (4500 of our 30,000+ employees are located here, and most of them are in R&D). Ottawa [...]

Earlier this month, one of Nortel’s technology pioneers was honored with Canada’s highest award - the Order of Canada – for his "pioneering contributions to the development of innovative technologies and for his sustained scientific leadership in Canada’s high-technology sector." I’ve never met Dr. Rudolph Kriegler – he retired from [...]

In this post, I wanted to share with you some of the discussions from our recent 2008 Nortel Technical Conference. This annual conference, which we launchedlast year, brings together 300 of Nortel’s top engineers and designers from across company. They come together for five days – this year in Orlando, [...]

In the last few weeks there has been a large volume of dialog around which technology should define the “core packet transport” of the Internet. Mostly that dialog has been focused on the ongoing debate between the MPLS technology camp and the Carrier Ethernet camp. If you are not familiar [...]

You’ve heard me talk in previous posts about the value of the network shifting - becoming less about the ability to move bits and more about the ability to create a truly personalized, immersive communications experience. In this respect, “context” and “identity” are key areas of opportunity for innovation in [...]

In the past several months, I have been involved in a number of discussions around the world, where governments are trying to push for “next-generation” broadband as a government-sponsored initiative. The reason for this is that in the last decade many countries have used broadband roll-out as a way to [...]

Location: Toronto After a crazy few weeks of travel, including attending a trade conference in Northern Ireland, meeting UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Northern Ireland First Minister Ian Paisley, and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness – and a host of other activities – I am finally back [...]

I’m pleased today to host a guest blog from well-known industry thought leader Dr. Andrew Lippman. Andy, one of the founding directors of the MIT Media Lab, is half-way through a year-long sabbatical with Nortel as our first (but certainly not last) Visiting Fellow. The possibility of Andy doing his [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada One of the most significant challenges of being in the public eye and communicating to the press is the fact that headlines often fail to capture the true essence of the details, and often even the details are taken out of a broader context. That reality can [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada First of all, thanks to everyone for the spirited commentary. I appreciate your passion. Although many of the comments were “off-topic” (as Bob pointed out in #26), I think for the most part it was a worthwhile and interesting dialogue. Although realistically I cannot possibly respond to [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada In recent months, many of you have commented on or asked questions about our marketing efforts, believing perhaps that we were not marketing our technology as aggressively as our competitors, and concerned that we were losing mind share opportunity. Nortel Technical Journal I will ask Lauren Flaherty, [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada Over the past year, some of the “non-technical” comments from many of you have been focused on what you consider to be the lack of visibility for Nortel in the public arena from a marketing and advertising perspective. My intent was to post a blog today about [...]

Location: Flight from London to Ottawa (returning from Mobile World Congress) After a good few days at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, my single biggest conclusion is “Oh, what a difference a year can make”. I have been in this industry long enough to know that the one thing always [...]

Since it’s the beginning of a new year, I thought I would go out on a limb and posit some predictions on what we might expect to see in telecom and IT in 2008. As with all predictions, these are at best qualified guesses, but let me try to explain [...]

Location: Ottawa Over the last several months, a number of you have left comments or asked questions about Nortel’s strategy and direction. Some of you have also left similar comments and questions in other industry blogs and forums. I thought an interesting and more personal way to tackle some of [...]

Location: Train from Toronto to Ottawa Hopefully you have all taken some time off to recuperate from a crazy year and prepare for a truly transformational year in telecom in 2008. I spent a few much-needed weeks recharging over the holidays, and also spent some time reflecting on 2007 and [...]

Location: Ottawa, Ontario You've heard me talk in past posts about how we need to work as an industry to turn the challenges of Hyperconnectivity into opportunities. Nortel's Carrier Networks team has taken the conversation to another level by speaking directly to consumers about what they'd like to do if [...]

One of the key drivers behind Nortel's Unified Communications strategy is the realization that success in the applications business of the future will not be based on who can build the best single application, but rather who can present the most comprehensive and useful experience to the user. In the [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada It's been a great week for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, which I've talked about in a previous post. As a Board member of this effort, seeing the XO laptops go into mass production, seeing the first country orders come in, and now with the [...]

Location: Ottawa, Canada On Monday of this week, Google and a few other folks (actually a pretty wide range of semiconductor companies, handset vendors, cellular operators and others) announced the long-awaited G-Phone (Google Phone). What’s interesting, however, is that it really wasn’t an announcement about a phone at all, but [...]

Location: London, UK A few weeks ago I spent a day in Washington, DC with a wide range of regulators and government officials. My purpose was to discuss the Net Neutrality issue in addition to just spending quality time with some of the people who shape telecom policy in the [...]

Location: Barcelona, Spain It’s been a crazy few weeks for me but, finally, I have some time to catch up on a few blog items. Sitting here in Barcelona after flying over night from Ottawa via Heathrow, I was reflecting on the Nortel Patent Awards Gala we held in Ottawa [...]

As I indicated in my post yesterday, I invited Richard Lowe, the president of Nortel’s Carrier Networks organization, to do a guest blog on Nortel’s 4G strategy, in order to address the considerable dialog around that topic recently and to address some of the very specific questions that have emerged. [...]