Does anyone know when Alcatel declared the Lucent Stinger product line "end of sales" ? The Alcatel web page confirms it is discontinued but no date shown.
All of the PDFs I have seen (thank to my buddy Mr Google) point to Lucent documents in early 2000s. (and few discuss Stingers deployed in remotes). None have the Alcatel-Lucent name, all have Lucent only. In a regulatory Filing, Bell Canada says that it deployed 80% of them between 2006 and 2009, with the rest between 2009 and 2012. I was under the impression that Alcatel end-of-lifed the Stinger product line not long after it purchased Lucent at end of 2006. So knowing when this actually happened would greatly help understanding this. The Stinger DSLAMs deployed by Bell Canada are causing problems because they are not fully VDSL2 compatible and Bell Canada has identified only 1 modem (Sagemcom 2864) that is compatible ( a previous one Cellpipe has been end of lifed).
From the time the end of sales has been reached, how many years could a carrier expect to see firmware/software fixes for their fleet of DSLAMs installed throughout cities ? I assume that while the end of life .PDF on the web site is restrictive, that Alcatel would still value carriers and provide them with "mature product" support ?
Are there precedents of other carriers who deployed Stingers and have since replaced them due to their being end of life and not so compatible with VDSL2 ? Bell Canada stated that it has no plans to replace them, but this could be just regulatory talk. Any background information would be appreciated.