In a previous Blog article here, I discussed a common theme among how Carriers are reacting to the general economic contraction we are currently experiencing. In the Core of their networks they are running their networks beyond points at which they would normally upgrade. At the Access they are purchasing the same amount of ports as before, due to demand not diminishing, but they are squeezing the Vendors for better per-port pricing.
So basically, the demand is still growing, that demand is being met at the Access but the Core is expected to cope with less investment.
Recently, over the last 6 weeks or so, I have been hearing about major network outages across Europe. To be fair, I have no empirical evidence for a real trend as I haven’t been tracking this scientifically over a long period of time, nor can I point to any specific outages as the companies affected want to keep their problems as quiet as possible. However, the rate at which I’m hearing about them is alarming and immediately makes me draw parallels between current investment patterns and those reported issues.
After speaking anonymously to a number of people in the industry recently there is another point that could be a contributing factor. Not only are a number of Carriers squeezing the last drop of value out of their infrastructure investment, they are also being forced to let go of some of their Engineering and Operations talent. In one of my conversations one guy went so far as to say that the most recent outage was directly due to inexperienced Engineers being tasked with a migration that was much too complicated for them to be doing.
Are you seeing this? Is this becoming a pattern with the Carrier you work for or work with? Sound off below!
