I read an recent press release from LG Nortel and thought we might gain some understand by interviewing Peter MacKinnon, the Chairman of LG Nortel Ltd, and President of the LG Nortel BU.
[CF] Is the LG Nortel relationship an entity that exists regardless of the turmoil at the parent company?
[PM] LG-Nortel is a profitable, standalone business and has not filed for creditor protection. The company is solvent with a strong balance sheet, >1000 employee base, enjoys a leading position in building customer network solutions in Korea (across several product portfolios) and has generated positive cash flow from operations since its inception in November of 2005. Given Nortel's filing for creditor protection and the ongoing business environment, Nortel has decided its intention to seek a buyer for its majority stake (50% + 1 share) in LG-Nortel, the company's Korean joint venture with LG Electronics.
Nortel has determined this is the best path forward to secure a sound future for LG-Nortel. Nortel and LGE are fully committed to LG-Nortel's future success and are committed to concluding this transition swiftly and efficiently for the benefit of LG-Nortel and its customers. Throughout the process, the LG-Nortel management team will ensure that business operations continue as usual.
[CF] Nortel's strength is in optics and LG has a history in electronics, what should we expect?
Current fiber access technologies, such as TDM based PON solutions are very complex, do not scale, are limited in service offering, are not foundational in addressing business services and backhaul infrastructures and are OPEX challenged over the long run. Our WDM-PON solution will break through a number of these barriers that relate to above cost effectively and with simplicity, and should provide the foundational solution for the next 20-30 years for residential, business and backhaul applications.
[CF] You have a history with WiMAX, do you see a parallels in requirements for high speed data between the fiber and wireless experiences?
[PM] Absolutely! You can find parallels between the two technologies, they are complementary and have different value propositions?
Both fiber and WiMAX are addressing the need for high speed connectivity either combination of mobility and landlines. Without going into too many details, WiMAX has provided significant breakthroughs in high speed data over OFDMA based wireless networks, with major breakthroughs in technology specifically MIMO signal processing.
Whereas, traditional Fiber based systems use landline optical technologies, the most popular being Gigabit PON/Gigabit Ethernet PON support point to multipoint end user connectivity, however, the relationship is similar to WiMAX, the bandwidth served is inversely proportional to the number of subscribers in a geographical serving area. In addition, these technologies do not perform well for a ubiquitous fiber infrastructure that delivers business services and backhaul solutions. LG-Nortel is currently marketing a solution for global operators to leverage all the benefits of Point to Point connectivity with the added value of point to multipoint fiber topologies similar to existing TDM PON offering.
[CF] What places in the world do you think we should focus on to see the trends?
Lastly, innovation, will dictate the path that operators may follow in the near future, specifically as new technologies that have the promise of longer term sustainability will end up being the winner in deployments.
[CF] In your career what changes were you least expecting?
Tags: LG, LG Nortel, MetroEthernet, Nortel, Peter MacKinnon, WDM, WiMAX
- Related Entries
- LG Nortel OY! - Jul 06, 2009
- 4Gee - What happened to Nortel? - Jun 22, 2009
- Wireless Backhaul is Fiber? - Jun 26, 2009
- Pareto Principle: Alvarion does not need Nortel - Jan 31, 2009
- The Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable Bankrupt Nortel sheds WiMAX - Jan 29, 2009
- Scenario Planning; If You Build It Will They Come? - Jul 06, 2009
- Nortel Enterprise: Two Buyers (Together) are Better than One - Jun 29, 2009
- Intel Finnishing it Connections, or, That's Nokia with an IA - Jun 25, 2009
- Why we are here? 4GWE Rewind - Jun 24, 2009
- This is ARMless: Nokia & Intel - Jun 24, 2009
Copyright 4g-wirelessevolution