Nortel: Apparent Federal Disinterest in Ericsson Buy

As everyone waits to learn the winners of today’s auction of Nortel Networks Corp.’s enterprise division, one industry observer brings up a good point about the last auction, the one where Ericsson bought the wireless unit: remember all the national security brouhaha over Nortel selling to a foreign company?

All has gone quiet on the western front, as it were.

Blogger Mark McQueen, who owns a financing and venture debt fund in Canada, had thought that country’s government would “find a way to spirit Nortel’s LTE’s assets into RIM’s hands” for the purposes of national security. And, for a while it looked as though BlackBerry maker Research In Motion would indeed get ahold of Nortel’s LTE technology, especially after it argued it is “critical infrastructure technology ... and should therefore be owned and continued to be developed by Canadians.”

But Canada's feds haven't acted, leading McQueen, and probably others, to conclude that "Ericsson looks to be well-placed to win the day."

Meanwhile, today’s auction of Nortel’s enterprise unit is underway. Avaya and Siemens are the two known bidders and there could be more. There’s also a lack of clarity around Verizon’s court hearing yesterday protesting a sale to Avaya, and how that might impact the outcome.