Q&A: Nortel’s Metro Ethernet Chief Philippe Morin

Philippe Morin

Nortel Networks’ Metro Ethernet Networks division, created three years ago, has been at the heart of much of the drama facing the equipment vendor in the past several months. Last fall Nortel announced it would sell the fast-growing unit, which includes its optical business, only to rescind that position last month. Most recently, in bankruptcy, the vendor announced it was curbing investment in the carrier Ethernet switch routers (CESRs) whose connection-oriented Ethernet transport capabilities it touted in 2006, prompting a wave of followers – some of whom have since faltered. Nortel now vows to focus more on the optical products in that unit, which have been gaining ground in the market as carriers transition to 40 Gb/s networks. Philippe Morin, the president of the Metro Ethernet Networks unit, spoke with Telephony today on the eve of his keynote address at next week’s optical trade show, OFC/NFOEC.

On next week’s keynote: The overall message we want to get across is that the optical market is still a great one to be in. Even in a difficult time, bandwidth continues to grow, and not just on the consumer side. On the businesses side, you’ve got telepresence, server consolidation -- that drives bandwidth. You need new technology to respond to that. This year we’re bringing more products to the market. People would say there’s too many [optical] players, but it’s still a great business to be in.

On the MEN unit’s product focus: We are going to focus our innovation around two markets: metro and long-haul. These markets are going to be the first to recover, and probably there’s still a question of how much they’re going to decline in 2009. 40G and 100G apply to both markets. We’re going to bring more packet functionality into our platforms. For example, we have layer-two service switching capability in our OME 6500 [metro core optical platform]. We’re going to increase the packet-switching capacity and bring more of that layer-two capability onto that platform, not just from a point of view of carrying Ethernet point-to-point but service-switching capabilities. PBB and PBT will be introduced onto the OME platform. When? You’ll have to stay tuned.

On the future of PBT, PBB and PLSB: We absolutely believe in the value of PBB and PBT in terms of connection-orient[ation], reliability and cost. The challenge you have, in a market like it is today, to start introducing a new technology with customers that have MPLS-based solutions today, to tell them to switch over to a new technology in a recession, is very difficult. When carriers’ capex and opex are constrained, to come in with a drastically new technology makes it harder. That’s why we made the decision to focus our Ethernet functionality toward packet optical platforms.