Ciena emerges as suitor for Nortel's Ethernet assets

After months of speculation, Ciena is stepping into Nortel's garage sale to talk about buying the beleaguered company's profitable Ethernet assets. The Maryland-based company said it is now in advanced talks to purchase Nortel's Metro Ethernet Business (MEN). Instead of trying to restructure the company after filing for bankruptcy protection in January, Nortel decided to sell off its respective assets.

Still, Ciena's potential purchase is far from a done deal. Similar to the selling off of its enterprise VoIP assets to Avaya and LTE assets to Ericsson, Ciena said on its website that 'any purchase would be subject to a competitive bidding process under the United States Bankruptcy Code and the Canadian Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act.' What's more, there's always a possibility that Ciena's Ethernet competitors such as Ericsson, Huawei or Nokia Siemens Networks could initiate a bidding war for the MEN assets.  

For more:
- see the official Ciena release here

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