Wireless Watch: Ericsson wins Nortel's assets, unless RIM can derail it

A year ago, it would have been unthinkable. Two giants, Nokia Siemens Networks and Ericsson (ERIC) bickering over who could get the wireless assets of Nortel Networks, a struggling provider of telecom equipment.

But this past weekend, that is exactly what happened. Nortel Network's wireless crown jewels were auctioned off on Saturday effectively pitting Finland's Nokia Siemens Networks against Sweden's Ericsson for the North American market. Nortel, the Canadian telecom equipment provider, filed for bankruptcy earlier this month. At stake was the future of the next generation of wireless technology -- in particular, a fourth-generation technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE) -- which can transfer data at hundreds of megabits per second.