Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in Montreal, Quebec in 1895 as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company. Until an antitrust settlement in 1949, Northern Electric was owned principally by Bell Canada and the Western Electric Company of the Bell System, producing large volumes of telecommunications equipment based on licensed Western Electric designs.
At its height, Nortel accounted for more than a third of the total valuation of all companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), employing 94,500 people worldwide. In 2009, Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the United States, triggering a 79% decline in its corporate stock price. The bankruptcy case was the largest in Canadian history and left pensioners, shareholders, and former employees with enormous losses. By 2016, Nortel had sold billions of dollars in assets. Courts in the U.S. and Canada approved a negotiated settlement of bankruptcy proceedings in 2017.
Alexander Graham Bell conceived the technical aspects of the telephone and invented it in July 1874, while residing with his parents at their farm in Tutela Heights, on the outskirts of Brantford, Ontario. He later refined its design at Brantford after producing his first working prototype in Boston. Canada's first telephone factory, created by James Cowherd of Brantford, was a three-story brick building that soon started manufacturing telephones for the Bell System, leading to the city's style as The Telephone City.
After Cowherd's death in 1881 which resulted in the closure of his Brantford factory, a mechanical production department was created within the Bell Telephone Company of Canada and production of Canadian telephone equipment was transferred to Montreal in 1882 to compensate the restrictions on importing telephone equipment from the United States.