gogoGophers

Inquiring minds want to know !

Asynk

We have upgraded a BCM 400 from 3.6 to 4.0. It has never been installed so not sure how it is going to run. Currently we have a DTM issue but dunno if that is 4.0 related or not. I am a M1 tech and all I can say so far is a BCM is the SLOWEST booting thing I have ever worked with, plus you cannot hotswap the cards. Seems cheaply built IMO.

Bundy06

So, am i going to be a guinea pig by having this done on a production box?
I have it slated for Nov. 24th really would like to hear from someone who has had it done

jim_naisium

Bundy06

I had to put off our upgrade for now, still wondering if anyone else had done this yet.

gogoGophers

I think my boss said the 4.0 upgrade is something like 7-800 bucks. Plus labor, plus risk of upgrading early in the curve. It seems like not a lot of people are going for this. We upgraded a TON of people from 2.x to 3.6. Upgrade was free (except labor) and there were some direct benifits (VoIP trunking was WAY better, for one thing). I know it's not a lot of money, but in our market, our customers are saying "Tell me again why I have to spend this money?" I guess at some point, 3.x will no longer be supported and that will be the stick. From one point of view, you could say it's only 700 bucks. But the other side of the coin is that all the other upgrades were free, does Nortel really NEED the stinking 700 bucks. How about maintaining the customer base we busted our butts to build?
Anyone else with thoughts on this issue?

Ramjet

It's like everything else with Nortel, they are going to end up pricing themselves out of the market. The so called WPP (Wholesale Partner Pricing) we pay for products sucks when someone else beats you on a sale by getting their pricing from some independant source, or Greymarket. Now I understand that they are going to start charging for tech support. What a rip!

__________________
Two snips, a snort, a turn, a fly, and a grunt, and it was so simple, like the jitterbug, it plum evaded me!

bncwesty

I have done several including our own system during the 4.0 Beta trials last summer. It is easy. Upgrade itself takes about an hour. Add another to backup before and prep, plus a few clean up programming afterwards. There is a known issue with CDR records exceeding 200MB which will fail the upgrade in the beginning. There are instructions for clearing the records. PM me if you need the instructions. Otherwise, all is easy.

One final word of caution, make sure you don't have the capacity issue if it is an older unit. We did and I did not replace the MSC because we were not experiencing any problems - until I tried to upgrade. once the MSC was replaced, no troubles.

My opinion is it is well worth the upgrade costs and one of the easiest BCM upgrades to date.