From the
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bankruptcy has its challenges‘
files:
Nortel Network has been in bankruptcy protection for all of 2009 and is now trying to sell itself off piece by piece. Should it be any surprise that some big names are now dropping Nortel?
The London Olympics 2012 organizing committee announced late last week that they were dumping Nortel as the lead networking vendor for the event. Replacing Nortel will be Cisco — though Cisco is not coming in as a sponsor in the same capacity that Nortel would have.
Nortel had been a Tier One sponsor while Cisco is coming in as a Tier Two sponsor. The difference in sponsorship levels could be a loss of $20 million for the London Olympics, according to multiple reports.
Nortel however is still set to be the networking vendor for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games at this point.
From my own point of view, it’s still uncertain whether or not a company named ‘Nortel’ in any capacity will still actually exist once the 2010 Olympics roll around – so I don’t think the book is closed on that event’s networking vendor yet either.