Good question, I will tell you, it pisses me off when I buy a radio from a category B vendor and find out some other company (maybe a competitor) got a much better price. Not because they bought a truckload, but because they whined louder or were bigger dicks or knew someone. Or it was the end of the quarter and somebody wanted to make quota. Similarly, I don’t like getting a good price, assuming that will be my price for my next project, but then the vendor says that quote was a special price we can’t do that now.
From: Eric Kuhnke Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2016 6:24 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] PTP link radio pricing: Retail vs. RFQ It seems the high capacity PTP radio market is segmenting into two categories: (a) Radios that are low cost and have a fixed price, there's no need to talk to a manufacturer/vendor sales rep to get a price. The radios don't have things like special license keys for certain features or extra money to enable XPIC. Example: AF24, AF24HD, the IgniteNet 60 GHz PTP radio, Mimosa B5, B5C, B5-Lite, B11, the lowest cost TDD Siklu 80 GHz, etc. You buy these online with a credit card and there's no price negotiation. A pair of AF24HD costs pretty much the same no matter who you are unless you're buying in quantities of 60 at a time. (b) Radios from traditional backhaul manufacturers where the price might vary depending on you who are, if you're an ISP or an enterprise end user: Trango, Dragonwave, Bridgewave, Cambium's version of the Ceragon radio, Ceragon itself, Exalt, etc. You have to contact a human and talk to them to get a price on a new link. My question is: What products/companies would you put firmly in category A, and which in B? Which companies have products in both categories? What effect do you think this will have on the market in the long term as more companies follow the example of the Mimosa 11 GHz radio?
