Purplechickenfoot

Actually, as part of the consent decree signed in 1956 to resolve the antitrust lawsuit filed in 1949 by the United States Department of Justice, AT&T and the Bell System proper divested itself of Northern Electric in 1956.  Later on, Bell Canada just didn't buy from AT&T as it was 50% owner of BNR along with Northern Electric. AT&T finally dismissed the Bell Canada attachment in 1975 as almost all equipment was purchased from Northern Electric such as SP-1, DMS systems.  All patents which were owned by Nortel after consuming all of BNR were sold in a bankruptcy proceedings as was the Class A (47.xxx.xxx.xxx) network assignment purchased by Microsoft. Apple did buy within a consortium access to many patents after Google consortium losing by bidding pi million. I guess it was as good a number as any! It's also Bell-Northern Research, Ltd. with a hyphen. As it was explained to me, there is always a BNR entity in Canada after Nortel, because of a real estate deal the Canadian Federal government enshrined into law.  So who's BNR and where do people from Northern Electric show up from after company had changed names over 70 years ago?