House committee calls meeting on Nortel sale

The House of Commons industry committee has asked the key players in the sale of Nortel Networks assets to attend an emergency meeting on Friday.

The committee wants to discuss the auction process that resulted in Swedish telecommunications company Ericcson winning Nortel's wireless unit last month at a purchase price of $1.13 billion US.

The proposed sale means Ericsson will acquire Nortel's so-called CDMA and next-generation Long Term Evolution, or LTE, wireless technologies.

Executives from Ericsson, Nortel and Waterloo, Ont.-based BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, which made a failed bid for the assets, will be at the meeting, which begins Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

Opposition parties and provincial officials have called on the government to review the sale, arguing that it will lead to a loss of potentially leading-edge technology from the country.

The standing committee's involvement is reminiscent of similar hearings held last year after Canadarm-maker MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates sold its space robotics and satellite units to an American rocket and weapons maker. That sale was eventually blocked by the government over national security issues related to MDA's Radarsat-2 satellite.

Industry Minister Tony Clement said last week he was looking into whether to review the sale.

Nortel, once the crown jewel of Canada's high-technology sector, filed for bankruptcy protection in January in Canada and the United States. Courts in both countries approved the sale to Ericsson on July 28.