Nortel Buys Router Developer in $99.5 Million Deal

Nortel is buying a U.S. enterprise router company for $99.5 million in cash.

Nortel said Tuesday it was acquiring Tasman Networks, which was founded in 1997 and is based in San Jose, CA.

The deal is intended to help Nortel deliver end-to-end multimedia network capability. Tasman develops secure, high-performance routers for enterprise networks.

"With the acquisition of Tasman Networks, Nortel will strengthen its position as an innovator in providing resilient end-to-end converged, secure IP telephony and multimedia networks," said Steve Slattery, president, of Enterprise Solutions and Packet Networks at Nortel, in a statement. "We anticipate that the Tasman products will complement our enterprise infrastructure solutions and further our ability to provide seamless, feature-rich networks that support critical real-time applications - including voice, video, and streaming multimedia applications."

Nortel will market the routers and its convergence solution under its Secure Router product line.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2006.