Ottawa writer looks at remnants of city’s high-tech industry

It was not that long ago that technology gurus were predicting that high-tech would replace government as the major industry in Ottawa. Small startups were booming and all seemed right with that world. Then came the “telecom winter” and things went south (literally and figuratively) quickly. Author James Bagnall has had a front-row seat for all of this. He initially came to Ottawa as a correspondent for the then-weekly newspaper The Financial Post, where an editor told him he wanted business stories over political articles. After a short stay with the now-defunct Financial Times of Canada, Bagnall landed at the Ottawa Citizen business desk. From 1993 until 2022, he covered the high-tech world in the nation’s capital. Bagnall has gathered those stories in his book Telecom Tornado: Tales from the frontlines of Canada’s Capital. The title is a nod to Geoffrey Moore’s 2005 tome Inside the Tornado. As with any tornado, in Ottawa's case, there was a lot of collateral damage. Bagnall had long wanted to write the book. “When you’re in the middle of a great long, dramatic period, it was just an incredible period of business in Ottawa’s history, everything just goes so fast,” he tells The Wire Report. “At the time, I sort of resolved to, at some point, I’m going to sit down and pull together all the best stories and do it with a narrative.” The author divides his 350-page book into three sections: extreme tech, death of Nortel, and government in extremis. He offers a clear-headed look at where the capital’s high-tech market has been and where it may lead in the future. The initial portion looks at some of the startups. Many familiar names are there: JDS Fitel, Mitel, and Cognos, to name a few. Bagnall follows the rollercoaster of soaring stock prices and crashing revenues, resulting in some companies being bought up or going bankrupt. “Ottawa happened to be expert in an area that you wound up having all kinds of money flowing into fibre optics and just a crush of investments responding to seven years’ worth of demand that happened in just one year. So when the end came, it just deflated equally quickly,” he reports. (Courtesy of James Bagnall) Bagnall devotes 11 chapters to an examination of the collapse of Nortel Networks. Once the shining star of Canadian technology, it foundered in the early days of the 21st century. The author blames a too-cautious management for not pursuing the proper options -- it did not purchase smaller firms in the same sector, and Nortel had an opportunity to raise millions of dollars on the stock market during the height of the tech boom but did not. “They didn’t see it as a risk and yet so many other companies like Cisco Systems and Ciena wound up raising lots of money just at the right time and they survived and Nortel did not,” Bagnall notes. Nortel’s former CEO, CFO, and top accountant were all charged over the dismantling of the tech giant; all three men were acquitted. They had been accused of fiddling with Nortel’s accounts to produce desired earnings. But over the course of the trial, it became evident that the RCMP’s findings did not back up the Crown’s charges. It took four and a half years for the matter to end up in court. The final section of the book looks at government boondoggles not directly related to technology, such as the capital city’s struggling light rail service and the federal government’s COVID strategy. Bagnall is not totally without hope that a resurgence could occur in the Ottawa tech market. He points to Shopify as an example of a firm that has blossomed. “It just came out of nowhere, almost, but the lesson there is that if you really want to create a long-term business, what you need is a platform that encompasses many different things,” Bagnall states. “Shopify is basically an operating system for the retail environment.” That retail environment is waiting to see if Shopify and other companies are part of a fresh breeze or just so much hot air. Telecom Tornado: Tales from the frontlines of Canada’s Capital by James Bagnall. Paperback, $19.95 –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca

Ottawa writer looks at remnants of city’s high-tech industry

People |
By Paul Park
| September 23, 2024

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

Ottawa writer looks at remnants of city’s high-tech industry

People | By Paul Park | September 23, 2024

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Related Stories

OPINION: Unlocking 5G’s enterprise potential requires viewing it as continuum of capabilities

Privacy Commissioner, FCC sign memorandum on telecom consumer privacy protection

Telecom association CEO wants more action, predictability from government

Reuse & Permissions

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us

People |
By Paul Park
| September 23, 2024