I live in Florida where dispite best efforts to protect our equipment, we get hit by lightning fairly often, sometimes taking out a whole cluster of equipment. We are running 80+ P9 AP’s (mostly non-advantage), and would like to upgrade them to Advantage which is a big chunk of change to do.
But worse then the initial “license cost” of $ 600 each (current promo price cost for an Advantage upgrade through distribution) is the fact that if I loose those radios on a tower, I am out $ 1500 to replace each radio, since Motorola doesnt repair them or give you a trade-out option on a new unit.
I mean the hardware costs less than $ 50 to produce and the only difference between the cheapest SM and and Advantage AP is the “license”, it would seem that having to replace the license because of a hardware failure at a cost of $ 1500 is very unfair and not thought through very well by Motorola
One solution would be a floating license for either the Advantage upgrade or even a standard AP or a "turn in your broke AP and get a new one for $ 250 or something else fair.
I can tell you that I wont upgrade most of my radios to Advantage for this reason and this reason alone.
If there was a floating Advantage AP license, I would upgrade every one of them eventually, and would even buy 10 at a time if that is what is required.
I have talked to my Motolora channel rep about this and he agrees that it is a good idea, but we need people to express that this is a desired option so that he can present it to the “upper” decision makers.
Paul
mmm… I don’t know if the difference between an SM and a Adv AP is just the firmware, makes sense though
but I do think Moto should consider the option of sending in a fried AP due to lightening for a minimal price replacement.
We are also looking at upgrading to Adv and have about 30-40 AP’s.
Pricing on the license is a good thought… lets hope Moto can see the sense…
I share the same sentiment.
We have an AP which is not powering which might be a cause of grounding, sent to LastMileGear but cannot be replaced because they said its not covered by Warranty.
We have also another AP bought from Local manufacturer last May 2005, and after a month of its warranty end, it also gave up because of lightning.
As of this time, we got to 5700APs dead. I hope Moto would do an exchange + additional cash…