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.