• Canada’s global competitiveness and productivity, and the role technology plays in improving both, if only small and medium-sized enterprises more readily adopted information and communication technologies (ICT);
• the importance of research and development inside businesses;
• strategies for building next-generation broadband networks across the country;
• notions of net neutrality and open, transparent networks;
• a drive to digitize all health records;
• the role legislation to protect consumers online plays in providing them with the confidence to adopt new technologies;
• and even a call to digitize all of Canada’s archived historical materials and make them accessible to the public.

It was a lot to take in, with the room full of high-powered business people, lawyers and academics, each with their self-interested view to propose. In his closing remarks, Minister Clement acknowledged he had a lot to synthesize.

But the underlying message of the proceedings, which were held under the high, arching ceiling of the Government Conference Centre’s main hall, was clear: the whole of the Canadian economy needs a thriving ICT sector, and the government needs to move quickly in adopting policies, legislation and spending plans that will position the country at the forefront of the continuing technology revolution driven by networks, the Internet, and digital content.

The timing was coincidental, but the symbolism was hard to miss. Just 60 hours before the conference opened, Nortel Networks officially announced what many suspected would be its fate ever since it sought bankruptcy protection in January: the once-grand communications equipment maker now planned to sell itself off in pieces—and likely for a sum about US$1.5 billion short of its US$3.6 billion in liabilities—and would also request that the Toronto Stock Exchange de-list its shares, likely putting its long-suffering investors out of their misery once and for all.

At the beginning of this decade, Nortel was Canada’s eminent technology flagship company, but now it is in tatters. Its stock last traded on Friday, closing at  at 18.5¢. On July 26, 2000, 2,239 trading days earlier, Nortel shares traded as high as $1245 (once adjusted for a 2006 1-for-10 stock consolidation), which gave it a market capitalization of about $385 billion, or about 36.5% of the total TSE 300 Index.

Briefly, a look back at the story in the National Post’s Financial Post Investing section the next morning (pay close attention to the last three paragraphs):

Analysts rush to ratchet up Nortel share targets: 50% upside seen

National Post
Thu Jul 27 2000
Page: D1 / FRONT
Section: Financial Post Investing
Byline: Michael Lewis

Better than expected second-quarter results fuelled a rise in Nortel Networks Corp.’s shares yesterday, and had analysts scrambling to upgrade their outlook for Canada’s most valuable company. After Nortel posted a large jump in per-share operating earnings, besting analysts’ consensus forecast by more than 25%, its shares (NT/TSE) rose $2.35 to $123.10. The stock is ahead by more than 68% this year and 286% over the past 12 months. In New York the stock (NT/NYSE) closed at US$87 3/8.

On Tuesday Nortel upped its revenue growth forecast for 2000 and 2001 to more than 40% from a previous maximum of 35%, and a number of analysts followed suit.

…Nortel said on Tuesday its EPS from operations will grow in the high 30% range and forecast 2001 growth of up to 35% in revenues and earnings per share.

Analysts are bullish on Nortel as a result of its growth prospects, largely based on intense global demand for its fibre-optic products.

And they are willing to look past the fact that Nortel’s accounting methods disguise underlying net losses, once the cost of acquisitions are included.

A string of multibillion-dollar acquisitions added $1-billion in costs in its latest quarter alone and contributed largely to the firm’s losses, after extraordinary items, of more than US$1.63-billion in the past two full reporting years.

“No company ever went under because of accounting methods,” said Tim Burke, a telecommunications analyst with Edward Jones in St Louis. “The important thing is to look at cash and growth, and Nortel has both.” (Source: FPInfomart.ca)

It’s breathtaking to reflect on the arrogance of that era, and all that has unraveled since.

But I digress. Although the news of Nortel’s liquidation was barely mentioned during the conference—the role of Twitter in the Iran’s election demonstrations was brought up more often—it nevertheless was an appropriate backdrop to a conference about Canada’s and its businesses’ roles in the global digital economy. Some of the attendees, like Sir Terence Matthews, have taken part in previous forums, task forces, strategic councils, and authored countless papers on the future of technology in Canada. Remember the National Broadband Task Force? That was 2001, in the days when Brian “Captain Canada” Tobin was the federal Liberal Industry Minister, although the process was started by his predecessor, John Manley (who is on Nortel’s board of directors).

Eight years on, Canadians use the Internet and digital media much differently, while their understanding of the complex issues underlying them has grown more nuanced. Debates surrounding issues like net neutrality (or network management), intellectual property rights, digital rights management and online privacy in age of social networking have come a long way.

I will likely write more about the conference (you can watch the archived webcast here) and the emerging digital strategy, either in further blog posts or in the upcoming issue. But here’s one final thought: it was remarkable how prominent luminaries from the Waterloo, Ont. region were present. RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis helped open the conference, while University of Waterloo president David Johnston played a key role, as did Open Text executive chairman and chief strategy officer Tom Jenkins (whom I profiled in the most recent issue). In fact, Jenkins’ initiatives of the University of Waterloo Stratford Institute, the Canadian Digital Media Network, and the Canada 3.0 Forum on June 8 and 9, clearly helped shape this federal conference, and were mentioned multiple times by Minister Clement and others.

But representatives from Ottawa’s technology companies were not there in force—only Kirk Mandy, CEO of Zarlink Semiconductor made a comment from the floor. And, of course, not a soul from Nortel was present.

Where will Canadian tech companies be in 2019? One hopes neither on the verge of vanishing, like Nortel is now, or still sitting in conferences, talking about how the government needs to form some kind of strategy for its ICT industry.

Further reading on Nortel:

“Plan Z,” Canadian Business magazine, January 27, 2009

“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Nortel Networks,” Canadian Business magazine, March 30, 2009

IDT will likely reduce operations at Ottawa-based Tundra significantly. Tundra, which has about 130 employees in Ottawa and another 100 in Wisconsin, was founded in 1995 as a spin-off from Terence Matthews’ Newbridge Networks (itself acquired by Alcatel in 2000 for $10.4 billion, which lead to hundreds of layoffs). As of Feb. 1, Tundra also had $63.4 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet.

So, scratch another company off our Tech 100 list, the 2009 version of which was released just last week—Tundra ranked 28th, with a market capitalization, as of May 22, of $120 million.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, chairman and founding CEO Adam Chowaniec is disappointed by this end for Tundra. As a vocal defender of the Canadian tech industry, he had hoped Tundra and Gennum would join forces to gain scale in a globally struggling chip sector. But once Tundra was put in play, it was money, not nationalism, that won out.

“This is not just about Tundra,” Mr. Chowaniec said . “We will see more companies go, particularly when the economy starts to turn, because U.S. companies have much stronger balance sheets than Canadian companies. They will be all over us.” (Credit: Canwest News Service)

Previously:

Feature story in Canadian Business about Gennum’s initial Mar. 19 bid for Tundra.

April 20, 2009 blog post on Gennum’s sweetened bid.

April 27, 2009 blog post on IDT’s rival offer.

April 30, 2009 blog post on Gennum withdrawing its bid.

It’s a dream that has remained elusive, in no small part due to the conflicting agendas of the players in each of the major links of any future mobile payment system.

Now, though, the three major wireless carriers are staking their turf. Today at the Canadian Telecom Summit, Zoompass was publicly launched by EnStream, a joint venture of Bell Mobility, Rogers and Telus. While the service is mildly interesting—it’s simply a way for people to transfer money between Zoompass accounts by SMS text message, with money also available on a special MasterCard PayPass card—what makes this something to watch is how it positions the carriers to call the shots in any more elaborate mobile transaction system.

I chatted earlier this afternoon with Robin Dua, CEO of EnStream. He was lured to Toronto a little more than two years ago from ExxonMobil Corp.’s Speedpass Network initiative, so has pedigree in the contactless payment industry.

A couple of things jumped out from the conversation. First, he thinks that EnStream, because it is closely associated with the three wireless carriers that command 95% of the Canadian marketplace, is in the best position to eventually bring the various parties together, bridging the technological challenges in the wireless network, the mobile handsets, and the business model of processing these financial transactions with banks or credit card companies. But he admitted that there is much to be worked out regarding how revenue sharing would work.

The second thing that strikes me: Dua made it clear that Bell, Rogers and Telus have little interest opening up EnStream to the other new carriers that will soon enter the Canadian marketplace. Globalive, DAVE Wireless, and Public Mobile will be without this kind of application on their phones. Considering the Zoompass service is just starting, it is too early to raise a fuss over the anti-competitive implications of this position, but it could prove to be an issue in the future.

Zoompass will take some work. It’s mostly targeted to smartphones, like the BlackBerry, iPhone and phones running Google Android, and consumers with more commonplace phones will need to open up a mobile browser and could incur data charges in addition to the transaction fees (50 cents, or 3.5% if the money is coming via a credit account). And it will take a lot of marketing to get people to know about the service.

But EnStream is clearly hoping that early gains in this field will let it call more of the shots with all the other players so keen to replace wallets with phones.

But, Fink said, when San Jose, Calif-based IDT raised the stakes earlier this week, the price grew too rich for Gennum’s blood. “We offered full and fair value for Tundra,” Fink noted pointedly (despite Tundra shareholders’ desire for a sweetened bid from Gennum, and at least one analyst who argues IDT’s bid still undervalues Tundra). “What’s important in those things is that you stay rationale and not emotional, and I think we have done that and have decided not to pursue the opportunity.”

However, even as Fink defended Gennum’s strategy as being “very solid” with healthy financials, he has also said that Gennum needs to accelerate its growth in order to not ultimately become an acquisition target itself—and that will require acquisitions. “Tundra was only one of the steps that obviously would have lead to accelerating and executing our strategy,” he said. “There are multiple things that can be done over time.  Two moves could be just as well suited, if not better suited to execute that strategy than one move that is overpriced.”

Fink said that Gennum, which makes semiconductor components for advanced video broadcast and data communication technologies, will continue to launch a slew of new products (it unveiled 11 at the National Assocation’s of Broadcasters’ NAB Show in mid-April) as well as hunt for other acquisitions.

But one gets the impression that reaching Fink’s goal of making Gennum one of the top 10 semiconductor design companies in the world by market cap will be a harder slog without Tundra.

Gennum

Another rival bid is possible, says Brian Piccioni, analyst with BMO Capital Markets. “More likely than not, there will probably be a bid from some third party we haven’t heard of yet for Tundra,” Piccioni said, while also acknowledging he has no specific insights as to what company might make a play. “The IDT bid significantly undervalues Tundra, and I think most people in the industry would be aware of that. Plus, in an absolute sense, the amount of cash IDT is paying over the amount of cash that Tundra has in the bank is chump change.”

As of Feb. 1, Tundra has $63.4 million in cash and short-term investments on its balance sheet.

Tundra shares have slumped in reaction, trading at $6.18 a little after noon. Earlier in the week the stock had climbed as high as $6.38.

Piccioni had opposed Gennum’s proposed deal, calling it “low-ball”, and didn’t believe Tundra’s institutional shareholders would have tendered their stock anyway—nor is he sure that they will go for IDT’s all-cash offer of $6.25-per-share. But it helps that cash is on the table, he said, and not Gennum’s relatively illiquid stock.

According to an e-mail from Tundra Semiconductor, shareholder’ will vote on IDT’s offer has been set for June 19.

Previously:

Feature story in Canadian Busines magazine about Gennum’s initial Mar. 19 bid for Tundra.

April 20, 2009 blog post on Gennum’s sweetened bid.

April 27, 2009 blog post on IDT’s rival offer.

Another Monday, another update to Gennum’s proposed acquisition of Ottawa-based Tundra Semiconductor: Integrated Device Technology (Nasdaq: IDTI) has made a rival all-cash bid for Tundra, offering $6.25 per share, or about $120.8 million.

The offer comes ten days after Gennum, based in Burlington, Ont., sweetened its own initial bid to $5.81 per share, or about $112.1 million. In a press release, Gennum said it was reviewing its options, and that it will decide how to respond by May 1, and Tundra’s shareholder meeting is currently set for a week later. Tundra would pay Gennum a $5-million break-free should its offer fail.

IDT, which is based in San Jose, Calif., is a larger rival to Gennum, offering mixed-signal semiconductor designs to a broader range of end markets. As of the end of 2008, IDT had US$302.4 million in cash on its balance sheet.

At the time of writing, Tundra stock was trading at $6.29. It’s been 18 months since Tundra stock has traded in a similar price range.

My take: Tundra co-founder and chairman Adam Chowaniec told me in an interview that after sitting down with Gennum, Tundra did look at alternatives before recommending its initial offer. Considering investors’ and analysts’ concerns over the price Gennum was willing to pay, you have to wonder if IDT was ever approached, and if it was, what has made it reconsider making a bid. Maybe it didn’t see the possibilities of Tundra’s portfolio until Gennum had to justify its proposed acquisition. IDT’s strategic rationale certainly rings similar to Gennum’s:

“…The strength of Tundra in serial switching and bridging using PCI Express®, Rapid IO® and VME, combined with IDT’s mixed-signal portfolio and channel capabilities, would reinforce IDT’s leadership in interconnect solutions for the communication, computing, and embedded segments,” said Dr. Ted Tewksbury, president and CEO at IDT. “We believe that this strategic business combination would provide customers with a broader product offering as well as improved service, support and future roadmap of serial connectivity innovations.”

What will Gennum do? When I interviewed CEO Franz Fink for my feature story, he spoke with passion about the strategic value of the Tundra deal, and acknowledged there aren’t many other alternative targets. “There is no good or bad time for a deal as long as you’re absolutely convinced that what you’re trying to build is the right strategic next step in the evolution of the company,” he said on Mar. 26. “Then it only comes down to who can you do it with? There are only a few opportunities out there. And one of them is too big, because they are $800 million in market capitalization and doing a lot of other things—that’s IDT—and then there’s PLX [PLX Technology], and then there’s Tundra.” (PLX Technology is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., and currently has a market cap of about US$103 million.)

For Fink and Gennum, it’s gut-check time. The company had US$40.7 million in cash on its balance sheet as of Mar. 1 (its Q1 ended Feb. 28), and at the time of writing, a market cap of $182 million. Will it be able to come up with a juicy counteroffer? If a Gennum-Tundra deal does come together, it may look in a financial sense like less of an acquisition, and more like a merger of equals. And if it doesn’t, Gennum could have to rethink its strategy.

A plant stands in front of piles of waste paper being shipped to mainland China for recycling, at a collection site in Hong Kong on Earth Day April 22, 2009. (REUTERS/Tyrone Siu)

This is a bit outside of my usual focus, but this image (one of a series of stunning photos compiled by the Boston Globe’s Alan Taylor in honour of Earth Day) is, for me, a striking reminder of the environmental costs of that supposedly green act of recycling. After the collectors empty your blue box at the curb, where does that recycling go? If you’re an Ontario resident, some stuff, according to this Toronto Star story, goes to China. (How’s that for a flat world?)

When grappling with environmental issues, like with most complex problems, people are apt to fixate on solving isolated aspects with complex solutions, and not see the forest for the trees. Recycling, in theory, is great; if it’s not done well, though, it creates new problems. Sure, innovation is messy. But how messy is it to just focus on those other two neglected cousins of recycling, “Reduce” and “Reuse”? Recycling is a complex, costly solution and ought to be the last of those “Three Rs” we consider doing in our daily lives, but it’s often the first.

On Friday, Gennum and Tundra announced an amended offer that jacks up the value of the deal by some 31%, boosting the cash-and-share deal’s purchase price to $112 million from approximately $86 million when it was first announced on Mar. 19. Now Tundra shareholders are being offered $5.81 in cash or 1.1679 common shares of Gennum (or some combination of the two), up from $4.43 per share or 1.1575 Gennum shares. Also, current Tundra shareholders are expected to end up owning about 23% of the combined company, versus 18% under the previous offer.

Why the sweetened pot? Clearly executives heard from institutional shareholders in the last couple of weeks that the deal undervalued Tundra:

“We considered a number of factors including the feedback that we have received from Tundra shareholders,” said Gennum spokeswoman Robin Valtonis on why Gennum raised the bid…. “We believe that the increased offer will assist in ensuring a successful completion of the transaction.“(from the Financial Post)

Brian Piccioni, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, remains unconvinced. “We still believe it is completely inadequate, although somewhat less inadequate than before,” he wrote in an e-mail to me this morning. “Ultimately, it is up to the shareholders to decide.”

The shareholder meeting is set for Friday, May 8.

Although executives must be sorely tempted to focus on the severe and ever-changing challenges of the here-and-now, it seems that they are for the most part taking to heart the idea that research and development budgets should be protected from cost-cutting initiatives, so that when the recession ends, the cupboard isn’t bare.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that big U.S. companies spent nearly as much on R&D in the last three months of 2008 as they did a year earlier, even as revenue fell 7.7%.  (The WSJ looked at the 28 largest R&D spenders, excluding auto makers and the drug industry, where government requirements dictate R&D spending.)

This could be a lagging indicator, as the story notes:

“Research budgets often are planned in advance and take time to cut. Companies that today pledge to protect R&D may cut it tomorrow, particularly if the recession worsens. Mergers of major players could lead to cost-cutting that crimps overall R&D spending.”

But the question of how much is being spent on R&D is perhaps not so pressing as the question of how R&D budgets are spent (and even where, since some North American firms may outsource more R&D overseas). According to this story, companies are retooling to focus on improving existing products, and not as aggressively targeting new markets. (Also, the U.S. government’s stimulus spending plans are also shaping R&D priorities—no surprise there.)

In response to the story, Massachusetts-based innovation consultant and author Scott D. Anthony wrote a blog post of his own, warning that this might be the wrong approach. By pouring money into improving existing products, companies could “overshoot” what customers are willing to actually buy—and miss emerging opportunities. Anthony’s suggestion: prune R&D prudently, and balance the short-term opportunities with exploring new markets.

So how do you do that? If you ask Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox Corp.’s chief technology officer, she would likely tell you to talk to your customers about both the here-and-now, and the future—and empirically study how they use your products or services.

Vandebroek spoke about this when I interviewed her for a recent column of mine about her company’s revamped approach to R&D. Xerox, which is not one of the 28 that the WSJ analyzed for its story, is an interesting example of a company with a long-standing commitment to R&D, but also one with a history of squandering it. Ever since Xerox almost went bankrupt earlier this decade, a priority for Vandebroek has been making R&D more effective.

It is no panacea. Xerox still faces its share of business challenges.

But it’s worth noting that while Xerox has big research facilities with lots of smart engineers and scientists toiling away in labs, what matters is how successful those same people are working alongside business managers to foster real innovation with their customers.

What’s your company’s approach to making innovation work in an uncertain economy?

Further reading: my recent cover story on the state of early-stage financing.

Also, a first skeptical take from Wellington Financial’s Mark McQueen, who has been prolific on the sector’s woes.

UPDATE

As noted in the trackbacks, McQueen issued another biting missive today (why he mocks MRI for contacting reporters, I don’t know).

Also, check out Toronto-based high-tech lawyer Suzie Dingwall Williams’ take on things.

I found out this morning—after the story went to press on Friday—that those numbers are close, but not absolutely accurate. In fact, employment in Canada is lower.

From an overdue e-mail from Nortel spokesperson Mohammed Nakhooda this morning:

“…these are the latest numbers I have for you…
5639 (Canada)
3844 (Ottawa)
8882 (US)

14521 (North America) – total

Presence in Toronto (HQ); Belleville, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Regina, Vancouver and Winnipeg.”

I’m assuming that the “presence” in places like Edmonton, Halifax, Regina, Vancouver and Winnipeg are minimally staffed sales-support offices.

Also, those numbers will decline. The full effect of the 5000 layoffs announced in recent weeks is still rolling through the company.

The price was not disclosed, but you can bet Bell got a good deal. According to a Globe and Mail story, Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Mobility and the chief brand officer of Bell Canada said his company paid “considerably less” than the $334-million that Circuit City paid for the company five years ago. And you’d certainly hope so, considering the U.S.-based Circuit City, formerly the second largest electronics retailer in that country, is currently liquidating its stores under bankruptcy protection proceedings.

So what did Bell get? At first blush, not much. The Source has about 5% of the fiercely competitive electronics retail market in the country, a segment that is not immune to an economy in recession. As a shopper, I don’t have a particularly favourable impression of the odd mix of products (many of them loud and flashing) on its shelves. Why would Bell want its mobile phones, satellite and Internet services associated with that?

If you read the Globe story, the analysis from the usual suspects is scattershot: Rogers and Telus expanded their retail presences significantly in recent years, but Bell has lagged, so this is an easy way to catch up; The Source’s mall-based stores will help them reach out to women and teens; the stores’ inventory of gadgetry, electronic gewgaws, and high-profit-margin cables, are “complimentary” to Bell’s services; it gets Bell high-profile marketing space.

Perhaps all of the above is true, and taken together, bought at a discounted price, makes this strategy reasonable. But the real kicker is that The Source has a deal with Bell’s competitor, Rogers (which also owns this website and signs my pay cheques), to sell mobile phones and services. So this move takes 750 retail stores out of Rogers hands as of the end of this year. Probably not a huge loss for Rogers, given its been converting its video stores into destinations for all Rogers services, but better for Bell than letting The Source fall into Rogers’ hands.

Nevertheless, it seems strange that BCE, a company that has been persistently divesting itself of any assets that don’t directly tie into its phone, mobile, Internet or satellite services, would suddenly acquire a loud, junky electronics retailer. So I view with some skepticism Oosterman’s remark, “The Source will continue to sell the broad array of products and services that it does today.” For now, perhaps. But ultimately, if this strategy is really going to pay off, I expect to see underperforming stores closed and the remaining ones overhauled.

But news today suggests U.S. VCs are nevertheless not writing a lot of cheques. Reuters reported Monday that preliminary figures show VC funding dropped 71% to US$1.3 billion in January from a year earlier. Only 203 companies received investments, compared to 465 in Jan. 2008, and average funding amounts were down sharply, too.

Of course, one reason might be that only a desperate company would willingly take venture capital in market conditions are that weighing down valuations. U.S. VCs may still be interested in investing, but smart entrepreneurs won’t do a deal at any price. Some Canadian entrepreneurs who have recently pursued U.S. venture capital are also finding that, although networking in America is worthwhile, tapping angel investors is a faster, simpler means to financing their growth strategies—without destroying their company’s valuations.

For now, find my cover story on newsstands.

(By the way, if you’re wondering why I write both columns online and a blog, well, I’m told that in the coming weeks the two things will become one—just a blog, found right here, I think—and this duplication will disappear.)

(By the way, I have a story about what comes next for Nortel in the current issue of Canadian Business, which begins to hit newsstands today.)

Why is this so hard? I just want to go to bed.

It’s good to know I’m not alone. I stumbled across an interesting blog post by some fellow named Elliotte Rusty Harold who is, according to his blog, an adjunct professor of computer science at New York’s Polytechnic University. In the post, he writes about how asinine—my word, not his—it is that shutting down a computer or closing a program often requires multiple steps, with alert windows always double-checking if you really are sure want to do that. The reason software double-checks, of course, is to help you avoid losing unsaved work.

But as Elliotte points out, computers should never lose data. The programs should not have to be told explicitly to save the data in the first place—it should just do it all the time. The hardware and memory limitations that required this cautious approach are no long a problem.

Most interesting, though, was a comment he added to the post:

Mobile devices may indeed be the wedge that brings this style of no-save interface into the mainstream. No backwards compatibility issues, and no expectation that they will work like a traditional desktop computer. As they get more powerful they will replace first laptops and then perhaps desktops: just plug into a monitor, a keyboard, and a power supply. After all, no one really cares how big the box is. We want big monitors and full size keyboards but the box that holds the CPU only needs to be large enough to plug all the peripherals into.

And that’s when it occured to me how little I even bother to turn on my old clunker of a laptop anymore. Instead I use my iPhone much more frequently for personal e-mail, social media and entertainment than I do the Ol’ Dell. In fact, I actively avoid even turning that thing on—in part because I never know how long it will take to turn it off again.

So there’s your challenge, tech industry: instead of just making software good to use, make it easier to stop using, too. Because some of us need to get some sleep.

The board of directors met last night, looked at all the options, and swallowed hard. Rather make a $107-million interest payment on its debt, the company will restructure.

Will this be the final chapter of the Great Calamity, or the move that as CEO Mike Zafirovski puts Nortel (TSX: NT) “on a sound financial footing once and for all.” In an effort to prop up what remains of Nortel’s business, Zafirovski writes in a letter posted to the website, “Nortel is still very much in business and our commitment to customers remains unwavering. We will continue to invest in leading edge R&D to deliver the value our customers expect from us.”

Will customers, sales prospects and suppliers buy it? Will employees? Or will this only confirm the sentiment that Nortel is not a viable businesss, and accelerate its decline?

“I am confident that the actions we’re announcing today will be the fastest, most effective means to translate our improved operational efficiency, double-digit productivity, focused R&D and technology leadership into long-term success,” Zafirovski said in the statement. “I want to reaffirm Nortel’s dedication to delivering world-class solutions and services to customers.”

Just what solutions and services will continue under the Nortel banner—or if, in fact, the Nortel banner disappears completely—is a matter of speculation. Its Metro Ethernet Networking division has been on the block for months as the economy further deteriorated, but nothing has come to pass. (One of the rumoured bidders, China’s Huawei, comes with a host of national security concerns for U.S. and Canada.) Perhaps this will move things forward.

Trading in Nortel shares have been halted and the TSX and New York Stock Exchanges are likely to delist the stock. For investors, those who were still clinging, this is the end.

First, an interesting analysis of some research conducted by HP Labs on Twitter.

Also, a fellow bloggers’ report on how Twitter propelled a Toronto charity event, #hohoto, to raise $10,000 in five days.

No, Twitter isn’t making money yet, and only recently does it seem to have worked out its issues with crashing. But hey, it’s still at the experimental stage. Maybe it always will be at some kind of experimental stage.

I’ve watched with some interest as mainstream media start to tap into the Twitterstream. Sure, the Globe and Mail’s TV critic, John Doyle, pokes fun at how The National’s Susan Ormiston and Peter Mansbridge’s chuckled last week at comments posted to Twitter during last week’s political crisis in Ottawa. But for a brief moment on Thursday, while the country waited for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to emerge from his meeting with the Governor General, #coalition and #Canada were among the most-tweeted subjects on all of Twitter. It is an obvious source of instant reaction to any event, and a pretty simple way to have real-time dialogue with an audience. Even Rex Murphy’s Sunday afternoon CBC radio show, Cross Country Checkup, started using it yesterday.

Personally, one use I have of Twitter is to watch headlines from the major news outlets, which are automatically fed from their websites. Troll around on Twitter for awhile, and you’ll come across lots of traditional media outlets starting to use it.

But how’s this for irony: the “old” media (as a magazine writer, I am obligated to put that in quotes), can also use Twitter to keep up on its own shrinking ranks. @themediaisdying tracks the career movements of journalists in the print and broadcast industries, as well as job cuts. A selection from over the weekend:

“THE MIAMI HERALD is being shopped around to be sold / is up for sale.”

“BROKER magazine is no longer publishing.”

“METRO has canned 4 Canadian reporters quietly. Expect more layoffs.”

Is it true? Maybe, maybe not. Twitter can also be a modern day rumour mill, but gone global and instant.

No wonder the mainstream media is paying attention to it. If there is one thing reporters love, it’s rumours—especially about their own industry.

And where did I hear about themediaisdying? On Twitter, of course. I follow Kaan Yigit, a senior team member of Solutions Research Group in Toronto, a consulting firm that researches entertainment, media, and technology. Yigit tweeted about it this morning. (For the uninitiated: on Twitter, “to follow” is to subscribe to someone’s messages, which are known as “tweets,” these are limited to 140 characters in length.)

By the way, you can follow me on Twitter: @AndrewWahl.