Mark Foster wrote:
Thus the wider concern I flagged; if the only source for equipment and
spares is the grey market, aren't the vendors missing the boat on
something which shouldn't even have a major overhead to maintain?
There is no sales of new chassis, which means the manufacturing is shut
down. The costs to maintain support and spares for an obsolete platform
with a declining customer base and no further sales is quite high for
the vendor. If they charged the real cost to provide support to the
operator, most likely the operator wouldn't take the support contract.
End result: end of support.
If the operator /really/ needs to keep it going, they'll figure out a
way to spare it. Telcos have been specialists in this regard for a long
time.
What about developing nations where Internet isn't yet as commonplace as
it is in the 'west' ?
They skip dialup.
