Move Over Cisco and 3Com. Make Room for Mitel

VANCOUVER -- Underdogs tend to get the royal treatment in Canada. Take the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, for example. There, a raucous hometown crowd rooted for Jamaica's bobsled team and Britain's ski-jumping hero, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

That fondness for the little guy extends to Canadian stock-market circles as well. While not exactly a small fry in the world of telephony, Kanata, Ontario-based Mitel (MLT Quote), a producer of semiconductors and phone equipment, has parlayed its relatively diminutive stature into glowing analyst and media coverage.

Thanks to a new, Internet-focused strategic direction announced earlier this week, the firm is shaping up to be a David to some of its Goliath-like competitors such as Nortel Networks (NT Quote), Lucent Technologies (LU Quote), Cisco (CSCO Quote) and 3Com (COMS Quote). ...