Talk:Mitel/Archives/2013

Sources Needed
This text was added to the main Mitel article without a source cited:

"1981 was also the year that Cowpland and Matthews encouraged the government of New Brunswick under premier Richard Hatfield to fund the construction of a semiconductor factory in the rural community of Bouctouche, north of Moncton. The plant never operated and Mitel walked away with the provincial subsidies to fund other projects in Ontario."

Before this can be included on the main page, a source needs to be cited in line with the Verifiability policy. -- User:Dyork August 17, 2006

So far as I understood, Bouctouche was not built to be a semiconductor foundry; they already had the Bromont (former Siltek) facility for that. Bouctouche was supposed to be for product manufacture (PCB manufacturing, system assembly). True, a lot of money was spent on it but it never opened, in large part because orders started to decline as the plant was nearing readiness. Crobanty (talk) 15:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Cover story?
I added the sentence about the lawnmowers' being a cover story. This was told to me in 1981 or 1982 by a Mitel employee when I visited the company (representing a large company that was thinking of buying some of its then-new SX-2000 PBXs). We saw the original glass-walled showroom in Kanata. I don't know if anyone ever wanted to put this in writing, for obvious reasons, but it was well known at the time. (MSI was long gone but its parent company, Nortel, was Mitel's competitor.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Isdnip (talk • contribs) 14:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Sadly this story won't pass the verifiability rules for wikipedia. Truth aside we need an independent source to verify this and only Terry and Mike would be available to do so. I've heard other stories that are completely different from your version (but also involve the lawnmowers - so we might never know.) Smartbettor (talk)

As a former employee (1981-1988), I can give you my version of the lawnmower story as I heard it. Prior to founding Mitel, Mike and Terry worked for Bell Northern Research (BNR). They left BNR to found their own telcom company (Mitel), but under the terms of their employment agreements, were prohibited from doing so for something like two years. They simply created/used the lawnmower business as a bridge to wait out the prohibition period. Crobanty (talk) 15:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

User Interface
I just came here to say that Mitel VOIP phone have the most revolting and retarded user interface I've EVER seen. The people who designed these phone ought to be punished in the most cruel fashion for the pain, suffering and waste of time they inflict on their users. Anyhow, as soon as I find a RS that addresses this point I will add it to the article. Niczar ⏎ 11:39, 19 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What does this have to do with making the article better? -- ErnestVoice (User) (Talk) 17:10, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * -I would say these come under specific product not any particular sub for this article. Smartbettor (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 20:31, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

SX2000 Voice and Data
In answer to the queury about voice and data integration on the SX2000, the SX2000 had a large number of data features. It had to data cards HSDLC and LSDLC (high and low speed data line cards) and its won set of modems. The SX2000 was always intended to switch data as well as voice.
 * Again, how does this improve the article? -- ErnestVoice (User) (Talk) 15:21, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
 * A question was asked about the provsion of data feautres on the SX2000. This was a reply to that question that indeed the SX2000 had a wide range of data features. As to the reason why noting that the SX2000 was an attempt at voice/data integration "improve[s] the article", this provides insight into the technological history of the comapny. The SX2000 attemtped to provide the data capabilities that are now part of IP and IP-PBX offerings. Mitel was technologically ambitious to attempt this in the early 1980s.  It lost to the then new technology of the LAN. Today the LAN and PBX call control are merging to create the IP-PBX and Mitel is in teh forefront of this development.

At the time of its introduction, SX2000 was Mitel's flagship product. It was intended to be their first digital switch. The predecessor "bread and butter" product, the SX200 was analog. The SX2000 was ambitious; development ran over budget and behind schedule, which put a lot of financial stress on the company. Where the SX200 was designed for medium-sized business, the SX2000 was targeted to large businesses, and also had the capability operate as a central office. An offshoot of the SX2000 development was a project internally nicknamed "Bullet" - Mitel's equivalent of a "skunkworks" project which, although much more modest than the SX2000, became the company's first digital offering to be available for sale. Crobanty (talk) 16:14, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Corporate History
I believe the statement about hybrid manufacture in Bromont to be incorrect.

While employed at Mitel, I toured the hybrid manufacturing which was located in the primary facility in Kanata (so I know it was occurring there). It is my understanding that hybrid manufacture only occured at the Kanata location; Bromont was for integrated circuit manufacture only (no hybrids). I never visited any of the other locations, but cannot recall any mention of Bromont producing anything other than ICs. Crobanty (talk) 15:59, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Mitel Founding Direct from Terry Matthews
The following is the story of Mitel's founding direct from Terry Matthews.

Q&A You're well known as a technology entrepreneur and began your career in that sector, but your first business started out in lawn mowers. Why? Mike Cowpland and I started our first business in 1972. We called the company Mitel, for Mike and Terry Lawn Mowers. I started it up by borrowing $4,000 from Bank of Nova Scotia. It was Mike's idea that we could get early revenue simply by being the Canadian representatives of HC Webb & Co., the first company to make a cordless electric lawn mower. We had quite a few interested distributors take the product. The problem was the shipping company lost the container. We heard that the container might have been washed overboard, but the truth is that all of the documents that went with it got washed away. We finally found the container at the end of September. I can tell you, there's a big learning there: timing is almost everything in life. In Canada, in October, you can't give away lawn mowers. That killed that. It taught me a very important lesson about timing. I could have been the lawn mower king if the stuff had arrived in January. But it didn't. Mitel eventually focused on telephony. How did you identify that opportunity? What I did was discuss with customers, right up front, the area of most interest for them. And I had an area of interest that they wanted: Touch-Tone receivers. We developed the world's first single-card Touch-Tone receiver [a tone-to-pulse converter for central office use, based on Cowpland's PhD thesis]. No one had ever done anything like that, but we cranked it out in nine or 10 months. I've still got the first circuit cards we put together. We sold those products for about $150, compared to AC receivers from ITT or what was then Northern Electric, which were $1,500 each. And even then, we made 80% gross profit. Once we had prototypes that worked and clients liked, we borrowed $120,000 from friends and family. For every $1,000 loaned, the lenders got the right to a $1 share. The $120,000 was paid back in three years. But here's the important thing: 10 years later, each $1 share had turned into about $2.5 million. So, the people who got stock options working for Mitel for almost nothing, they didn't complain when each $1 option turned out to be about $2.5 million.

It came from

http://www.profitguide.com/article/4685--sir-terry-matthews

Accessed on May 18, 2012 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.19.14.17 (talk) 19:10, 18 May 2012 (UTC)