Following Nortel’s announcement yesterday it hopes to sell its Metro Ethernet Networks (MEN) division, the Canadian vendor has admitted it is now evaluating options for its mobile equipment business. Reuters reports that the company’s chief strategy officer, George Riedel, said Nortel will seek “some form of partnership that would either de-risk the investment or improve the revenue footprint.” Meanwhile, Unstrung notes that in an analyst conference call yesterday, CEO Mike Zafirovski admitted: “Future consolidation is necessary in wireless. We’re exploring options for 4G that will be best” for Nortel, its customers and the industry.

Unstrung adds Zafirovski said that “what we did with UMTS and WiMAX” are examples of possible scenarios. Nortel sold its UMTS 3G infrastructure business to Alcatel in 2006, whilst in June this year the company announced it had enlisted Israel’s Alvarion as a partner in creating WiMAX products and was focusing in-house mobile R&D activity on LTE technology.