Nortel bankruptcy creates worry for 2010 and 2012 Olympics

Everybody by now knows what happened to Nortel. On 13th January Canada's Nortel Networks filed for bankruptcy in Delaware under Chapter 11 and Chapter 15 guidelines.
Nortel has been struggling financially from the past couple of years and was cutting jobs at regular intervals. Toward the end of the year, the Toronto-based company was warned of a possible de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange.

The Chapter 15 filing enables a company to seek a U.S. bankruptcy court's recognition of a foreign bankruptcy case as the main or controlling proceeding.

There might be some potential buyers for Nortel but let’s see what happens in the coming days.

Nortel Networks at the moment is of course the topic of much conversation and speculation. In my view following are the key issues which Nortel has to deal with in the immediate future:

• It might loose some of it major partners, like Microsoft and how does the bankruptcy will affect its smaller partners, like Airvana,


• How long it can hold onto skilled talent in places like Ottawa, Ontario, and Richardson, Tex, and,


• Where the company should continue to focus its product energies as its fate plays out.

These events have affected many in the industry but one of them in particular is the organizers for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics. Remember Nortel is the official sponsor for these two Olympic events and any trouble in Nortel is to stimulate significant trouble for these events.

Although Nortel Networks says, at least for now and before the bankruptcy court gets involved, that it remains committed as a sponsor and official network infrastructure provider to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics and the 2012 London Olympics.

Back in July, Nortel signed up as a Tier One Olympic sponsor, and, to support the London Olympics. In addition to million of dollars in cash, Nortel also committed to provide the network infrastructure for communications in cooperation with British Telecom for the 2012 Olympics.
At the moment Nortel is giving every signs to reassure its commitment to the games as a 'tier-one' local sponsor and official network infrastructure provider for the London games.
Under the London sponsorship deal, Nortel is to supply network infrastructure, including secure networks, local wireless networks, call center and fixed landline infrastructure to support more than 205 international sporting organizations, 20,000 members of worldwide media, 9 million spectators, and "billions" of television viewers.

This looks quite staggering so just imagine the scenario where Nortel can’t fulfill its commitment.
Just like it has done with the 2012 organizing committee, Nortel is assuring the Vancouver Olympic organizing committee that it will stand behind its commitment to the 2010 Winter Games.

It does makes sense that Nortel fulfill it’s commitment I think it would be able to do so as much of Nortel's support has already been delivered and is expected to be in place by May.