Brandon Butterworth writes:

Perhaps they aim to keep driving the competition out of business to ensure there's a cheap supply of equipment so they can grow whilst charging so little?

There are several problems with such a plan, even were someone to attempt it. One, overall traffic is still growing, so cannibalizing the already-constructed equipment owned by others after you drive them out of business only goes so far. (Note that low prices stimulate demand.) Two, requirements change - for example, filtering capabilites more or less acceptable years ago when certain linecards were released are no longer. And then there's the fact that the world is moving in the ethernet direction. Providers need to keep up, because their competitors will do so. Three, vendors won't support the current equipment forever, and once they don't, that will quickly end the usefulness of the equipment in question. Joe