Canadian network equipment manufacturer Nortel will inaugurate an excellence centre for wireless technologies in Romania, where software applications and hardware equipment will be produced for the third generation telephony networks (3G), Sorin Lupu, Nortel Networks president of the IPSEE region (Israel, Poland and SE Europe) told Ziarul Financiar.
Nortel is one of the main competitors of world's leading networking equipment manufacturer Cisco.
Nortel wants to turn its office in Romania into a starting point for its Western European offensive. "Romania will be an important bridgehead for Nortel, wherefrom a number of regions in Europe will be covered," Sorin Lupu said. Nortel's involvement on the Romanian market will not stop here, though the company officials say major projects of the company will be brought to this centre next year.
Nortel Networks initiative comes after a number of top IT and telecommunications companies have opened such centres in Bucharest, i.e. Oracle, Microsoft, IBM or Motorola in the last 18 months.
"We have a team of Romanian specialists that are now working on software applications for the third generation mobile phones in England, for the British O2 operator, the former mobile division of British Telecom (BT). They will form the core of this excellence centre," Sorin Lupu said.
Nortel has made significant research and development investments in Romania, and is currently employing more than 200 people developing software applications for computer and communications networks. At the same time, they are working on the design and building of hardware components used in the equipment Nortel sells throughout the entire world, the company officials say. "We invested several million dollars in Romania this year. At least two million (1.5 million euros i.e.)," Lupu said. The excellence centre for research of wireless technologies will be officially launched in the first half of 2005, according to the Nortel official.
Although serving major clients, like telephony operators, Nortel has maintained a low profile on the domestic market in the last few years. The company, however, made an interesting move last spring, when it hired Dan Garlasu as country manager, who used to run Cisco Romania before that. The company also announced the signing of a contract with IT equipment dealer Tornado systems, which became the sole supplier of this company for the Romanian market and Bulgaria.
The Canadian equipment manufacturer, whose history goes back to the man who invented the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, posted $9.81bn (7.3bn euro) revenues last year. This was the first time in five years when Nortel actually made profit, however, worth $732 million (550 million euros). Results in Romania were not revealed. dan.dragomir@zf.ro
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