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  2. Is Nortel Carrier VOIP Worth $800 Million?

Is Nortel Carrier VOIP Worth $800 Million?

In Nortel's 2Q report, Enterprise Solutions brought in $465 million, versus $163 million for circuit and packet VOIP solutions for the Carrier Networks division.
Eric Krapf
Eric Krapf
August 14, 2009

This post from Light Reading's Cable Digital News reports that Nortel's carrier VOIP unit could draw a "stalking horse" bid of $800 million from Sonus. The obvious question this raises is, "Wha....?"In Nortel's latest (2Q) quarterly report, Enterprise Solutions brought in $465 million, versus $163 million for circuit and packet VOIP solutions for the Carrier Networks division. Yet Avaya's stalking horse bid for Nortel Enterprise is just $475 million.

Enterprise Solutions reported negative management operating margins for this quarter and the year-ago quarter in the $80 million-$90 million range, whereas the entire Carrier Networks unit had positive margins of $213 in 2Q09 and $147 in 1Q08; but Carrier Networks includes the wireless units as well as circuit-packet voice, so there's no way to tell from the filing what the carrier VOIP unit would report on its own in the way of margins.

In any event, carrier VOIP services are commoditizing even faster than enterprise Unified Communications, so it's just a little hard to figure why the carrier VOIP unit would be worth so much more.

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