Nortel Networks lost out in its bid to become one of Verizon Wireless’ LTE equipment suppliers, surprising many industry watchers. But Nortel says its bankruptcy is to blame, and that there’s still plenty of love between the two. In fact, Verizon is definitely open to making deals with Nortel in the future, the vendor said.
“Verizon has assured us that they remain very impressed with our technology and our performance in the trials, placing us among the top three candidates in their selection process,” reads Nortel’s official response to the Verizon’s LTE vendor selection, circulated to journalists.
Verizon, Nortel said, was simply “not prepared to place incremental demands on us before we complete our restructuring. They are eager to have us emerge successfully, and have indicated that the door is open to future business.”
The response also highlighted Nortel’s “significant ongoing role in Verizon's CDMA/EVDO network and their carrier VoIP network.”
The vendor still expects to play a significant role in LTE in the future, saying that it’s “in trial with some of the world’s leading mobile operators, and we continue to receive high marks for the performance of our solution in the field.”
More cryptically, it said that it “intends to continue to assess all options, including partnerships, in our drive to get our LTE technology to market.”
Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent have won the contract for the radio access portion of Verizon’s planned LTE network. Starent Networks Corp. will deliver the packet core, and both Nokia Siemens Networks and ALU will supply IMS components.
Executive Vice President and CTO Richard Lynch announced the suppliers for the carrier’s LTE network at his keynote Wednesday at Mobile World Congress.
