Nortel cuts 50 per cent off routers

Nortel Networks has cut prices across its router range, amounting to what the vendor claimed is a 50 per cent discount.

Nortel Networks has cut prices across its router range, amounting to what the vendor claimed is a 50 per cent discount.

With immediate effect, users can claim a 30 per cent rebate on orders not yet delivered, with resellers and distributors able to claim back 10 per cent.

Nortel said the move will make "old world" routers into commodity products, and drive adoption of "new world" routing, based on devices with embedded IP routing code. It coincided with the release of Nortel's Open IP environment routing software.

Martin Hewitt, managing director of reseller Jaguar Communications, said the price cuts are a straightforward attack on Cisco. "I imagine this is going to be an increasingly bitter battle," he said.

Neil Morgan, city sales manager at Datarange, said Nortel is trying to move the market away from traditional standalone routers.

"Nortel knows the router war with Cisco is lost," he said. By doing this, Nortel wants to side-step Cisco by making routers look expensive and obsolete, Morgan claimed.

Hewitt added that the rebates may well be "a decent sweetener" for resellers but in the long term, a price war means less margin to cover costs.

The rebates apply to Nortel enterprise access routers, including the Bay Router AN, ARN, ASN and ANH. The scheme continues until January, when a new price list will be issued.