Lucent Stinger DSLAM End of Life questions

Tue May 14 05:50:54 UTC 2013

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.
> https://support.alcatel-lucent.com/portal/productContent.do?productId=stinger&entryId=1-0000000001080

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.