Nortel Deal Had No Impact On Alvarion

I mentioned yesterday that I felt that last year's announcement of the Nortel-Alvarion WiMax partnership probably didn't accomplish much. Nobody who was seriously looking at Nortel would have accepted Alvarion as a substitute, and nobody looking at Alvarion was going to make a decision based on what was essentially a distribution deal with Nortel.

Lo and behold, today WiMax.com announces that the partnership with Nortel had no impact on Alvarion's bottom line.

What's interesting to note here is that through this waffling, first announcing and producing WiMax gear, then dropping their own line for Alvarion's, then dropping the whole thing altogether, Nortel managed to hurt themselves and hurt the public perception of WiMax as a technology, without having any effect, positive or negative, on their chosen partner, Alvarion.