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Nortel demonstrates how not to do PR
Nortel has prevented a former subsidiary, Blade, from buying from a rival. The resulting publicity is far more damaging to Nortel than the original, far less widely read coverage, of Blade’s choice of a PBX from Fonality (based on the open source Asterisk) over Nortels own products.
First the damage: The win for Fonality was covered by specialist websites, and was not widely read. Their coverage of Nortel’s reaction has been linked to from the major IT news sites and has therefore been much more widely read. Everyone who seriously follows IT industry news now knows that Blade, at least, found that Fonality offered a better solution than Nortel.
The attempt by Blade to bully Fonality into accepting a return of a perfectly good product makes both Blade and Nortel look bad.
One can understand why Nortel is upset: look at the quotes in Fonality’s press release. However they would have been far better keeping quite.
Blade’s management also do not seem to realise that you cannot threaten someone unless you have a real hold over them.
Blade’s reaction to questions from Tom Keating was the common tactic of a suprrious claim of commerical confidentiality. Why a single purchase of a PBX needs to be confidential is not clear to me, especially when the one party for whom it might be a significant deal, Fonality, is happy to talk.
I also find it odd that Blade’s majority shareholder, Garnett & Helfrich, appears to be happy to allow Nortel to insist that is supplies Blade. If Blade is forced to buy a more expensive solution that cost, ultimately, comes mostly from Garnett & Helfrich. The most likely explanation is that the amount involved is not worth picking a fight with Nortel over. If it was a listed company this would be worth looking at further, but it is not, so it is Garnett & Helfrich’s business.
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