BT Group – formerly known as British Telecom – unveiled its eight preferred suppliers for a five-year, US$19-billion contract today for a new high-speed Internet network. It was good news for Cisco, Lucent, Siemens, Huawei, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Ciena and Alcatel. It was bad news, however, for Nortel, which watched Ciena and Huawei win the optical business. It was terrible news for Marconi, which generates 25% of its revenue from BT. Marconi shares tumbled as much as 39% today once investors got over the shock of Marconi's exclusion.. For Nortel, the troubling news is Huawei's inclusion in the group of eight. Huawei is emerging as legitimate and viable technology choice for carriers rather than being rregarded a low-cost supplier. Of course, Huawei's growing credibility could be bad news for Cisco and Juniper down the road.

Apparently, Nokia thinks it has done the unthinkable by developing the iPod-killer. The mobile device maker will offer a cell phone with a 4GB hard disk that can store 3,000 songs. In theory, it sounds like a great idea, and it would be even better if they also offered a calendar and calendar software and a camera. Of course, it would be easy to respond to Nokia's competitive cheekiness by adding a phone to the iPod. How about a deal between Virgin Mobile and Apple? The combination of two cool brands and visionaries – Steve Jobs and Richard Branson – could be awesome. That is, if Jobs can play nice, which seems a challenge given his battles against bloggers and John Wiley & Sons, which had all of its books turfed out of Apple stores because Jobs was pissed about a new biography on him called “iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business”.

There are rumblings Nortel may release its 2004 fourth-quarter and annual results laster today. Then again, it may wait until after the markets close tomorrow so it can get analysts even more upset. It's puzzling why Nortel insists on setting these kind of internal deadlines. All they do is create expectations that hurt you if you fail to meet them. During my short and rather undistinguished tenure as a dot-com entrpreneur, my boss ( and friend) sent me to a personal organization course where they taught you to set priorities, etc. The one lesson that resonated with me was “under promise and over deliver”. You tell people something will be done by Wednesday, and they're thrilled if you deliver it Tuesday night. Maybe Bill Owens should take this course. I can give him the telephone number.
Update (5 p.m. Thursday): Nortel will not file its numbers until after the markets close tomorrow. This doesn't mean the numbers will be available Friday but that Nortel will submit its documentations to the SEC. It could not be until Monday morning that Nortel's numbers are released for public consumption. Let's hope it holds a lengthy conference call rather than following recent practice of a four-question, mini-session that leaves people with more questions than they began.

AOL Canada – citing “increasing subscriber demand” – recently dropped the prices of its two VOIP plans. Truth be told, AOL is really responding to market conditions so it can stay competitive with Vonage, Primus, Comwave and BabyTel in the non-facilities based VOIP market. While AOL Canada executives have enthusiastically disagreed with me on their pricing strategy out of the gate, their Optimum and Optimum Plus packages were too expensive copmpared with many rivals. With a $5 reduction to $29.95 and $39.95 respectively, Optimum and Optimum Plus are have become more reasonable but if I was looking for bang for the buck and a strong brand name, I'd still go for Primus or Vonage.

It took a day for Nortel analysts to get a handle on the company's US$455-million all-cash acquisition of PEC Solutions but there is now a verdict: they hate it. It has been quite some time since I've seen so many analysts be so negative about an acquisition but it was all there in black and white as the research started to surface. So what don't they like? For starters, they are having a difficult time figuring out why Nortel would buy an IT services business in a market – the U.S. government – that is growing by 4% a year. Nortel is buying 1,700 people so it can sell more telecom equipment to the U.S. government. The big problem with people – unlike hard assets – is they tend to leave. While it is important to be able to service clients, the feeling is Nortel could have better off focusing on a more dynamic market.
The most damning part of the analysts' critique today was the focus on whether Nortel CEO Bill Owens is the right person for the job, and the company's inability to articulate a vision for the future. Scotia Capital Gus Papageorgiou was the most blunt when he essentially accused Owens of being in over his head and falling back on his own background – U.S. military – in making such a major purchase rather than what is good for Nortel. For an equity analyst, this is , but refreshing, behaviour.
Hopefully, Nortel will offer some insight into its big-picture plans by Friday, which is the self-imposed deadline it set to release 2004 fourth-quarter and full-year results. Analysts have a lot of questions and growing concerns. With the analysts picking apart Owens' first major strategic initiative, you wonder how long it will be before Gary Daichendt, Nortel's highly-regarded president and COO, gets the CEO job.

Do you really think people will watch a 30-minute sit-com on a wireless device? It's not something I would ever do but some analysts believe there are couch potatos who will need to get a TV fix while on the road. ABI Research's Alan Varghese is a mobile TV believer, although he concedes most usage will be short video clips. He said, however, that “for die-hard fans, watching their favorite half hour sitcom is not out of the question.” Varghese also throws out a physical theory about mobile TV's potential, suggesting the optimum TV viewing distance is 5x the screen size. Using this formula, he argues mobile devices are perfectly suitable for on-the-go TV.
What may put Varghese and I in different camps is I don't watch much TV – other than Deadwood, Arrested Development and – when the NHL is not on strike – the Toronto Maple Leafs. As a result, it may be difficult for me to relate to people who may watch 10, 20 or 30 hours of TV a week. For these people, maybe the ability to watch “Survivor” or “Desperate Housewives” while you're waiting to catch a flight is a pleasure worth paying for – even if it means looking at a small screen. You should never under-estimate how the mass market behaves, and never under-estimate the power of TV.
In other TV-related news, I was listening to CBC radio today about a device called TV-B-Gone that lets people to turn off TVs in public places such as bars and restaurants. It was interesting to hear there was little reaction when a TV was turned off in a bar – suggesting TV can often be more background noise than anything else.