Analyst maintains Sonus will bid on Nortel's VoIP business

Catharine Trebnick, senior research analyst at Avian Securities, is holding onto her theory that Sonus is still in the hunt for Nortel's VoIP division, maintaining Sonus continues to be "aggressively pursuing" Nortel's VoIP assets. In fact, Trebnick argues that Sonus' recent job cuts may even be tied to its pursuit of Nortel's VoIP division. "We believe [Sonus'] latest round of North American layoffs may be attributed to [Sonus] seeking Nortel's VoIP assets in addition to [Sonus'] relocation of organizational functions such as R&D to India."

Avian's claims follows reports that Nortel will launch an $800 million stalking horse bid for its VoIP division. Samih Elhage, president of Nortel's Carrier VoIP and Applications Solutions unit was quoted in Canada's Financial Post as saying that "we are very close to getting a stalking-horse bid, which will provide clarity on the situation."

But even if Sonus becomes the victor, Trebnick added that Sonus would have to get outside help to integrate the division into its company.

Of course, Sonus will have company if it does make a move. Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), while losing out to Ericsson in its fight for Nortel's LTE and CDMA assets, could still launch a bid as could Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson. In the event NSN becomes the victor, Trebnick believes the company would divvy up the assets and possibly sell off the media gateway elements to a vendor such as Genband. Genband previously purchased NSN's media gateway product set last year and is under a five year contract to provide media gateways to NSN.

For more:
- Cable Digital News has this analysis

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