Cisco Goes for Gold as Nortel Gets Olympic Boot

First, bankruptcy, now the ultimate humiliation: Nortel Networks has been kicked out of the Olympics.

Citing a need for certainty and working on a deadline, the 2012 Olympics organizing committee in London announced today that it has ended its infrastructure contract with Nortel and replaced it with Cisco. The group wants “the most connected games possible,” according to a statement, and with Nortel’s future in a state of flux, the committee needed to move forward with “a single business to cover the entire network infrastructure.”

Cisco, naturally, was very happy to pick up the slack, according to a statement released by the chief who covers the company’s U.K. and Ireland region.