Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!ria!uwovax.uwo.ca!telecom-request From: m21198@mwunix.mitre.org (John McHarry) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Northern Telecom in General Message-ID: Date: 17 Mar 91 21:58:58 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: The MITRE Corporation, Bedford MA Lines: 24 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 212, Message 6 of 10 Actually, Northern Telecom used to be Northern Electric. It was originally owned by AT&T. As a result of an earlier consent decree (1954?) AT&T was required to divest itself of its foreign subsidieries. It transferred Northern Electric to Bell Canada, which was also started by the Bell family, but was never, so far as I know, part of AT&T. Originally Northern Electric was sort of a parallel to Western Electric. It built things to the same drawings supplied by Bell Labs. I met a guy who worked in their engineering department when his job was to white out the WE logo on the drawings and substitute NE. I know they built identical 500 sets, and, I think, 2500s. They also built #5 Crossbar. As part of the sale to Bell Canada the licensing of new designs was phased out gradually. I think it ended for good about 1974. A result of that was the creation of Northern Electric Laboratories, which became Bell-Northern Research. It is Bell-Northern because part of it is directly owned by Bell Canada. Bell Canada holds about 51% of Northern Telecom. The rest is publicly traded. Northern Telecom Limited owns all of Northern Telecom Incorporated, the US subsidiery. Actually there is now a holding company called Bell Canada Enterprises at the top of the pyramid. It was set up to get the parent corporation out from under some regulations.