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GCN Home > 07/16/07 issue

Saving the Earth one phone at a time

Agencies find advantages in using refurbished telecom equipment

By William Jackson

Many folks in the Pacific Northwest take their environmentalism seriously, so when the solicitor’s office of the Interior Department in Portland, Ore., which frequently deals with environmental law, had the opportunity to replace its obsolete phone system with a recycled system, administrative officer Desi Hummel saw it as a win-win situation.

“We love our new phones,” Hummel said. The office also saved “a boatload of money” on the purchase price and monthly operating costs. And trading in their old phones kept the equipment out of the landfill for a few more years.

There is a large and growing market for used communications and networking equipment, said Frank Kobuszewski, vice president of technology solutions at network equipment provider CXtec. Anyone who has upgraded a PC probably has found that there is precious little demand for used computers. But routers, switches, private branch exchanges and telephones can have lives that extend far beyond the needs of a single customer or a product life cycle.

“Technologies and manufacturers are moving much quicker than the needs of many customers,” he said. “Just because it is obsolete for one customer, it is not necessarily obsolete for others.”

CXtec sells and supports new equipment, but its equal2new line of refurbished products accounts for more than half the company’s business, Kobuszewski said. They specialize in equipment from major manufacturers, including Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Hewlett-Packard, 3Com and Avaya.

CXtec, originally Cable Express Technologies, got its start in the government market selling IBM mainframes for the country’s ballistic missile system. The government remains a primary market for the company. It has a General Services Administration schedule contract for its line of refurbished products — GSA encourages the reuse of surplus equipment, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation allows the purchase of used goods.

“The government has been a significant growth area for us on both the buy and sell side,” said Scott Gregory, director of the CXtec government business unit. “Our biggest trade-in partners are in the Defense Department. IPv6 has been a huge driver for us in the last six to nine months.”

More news on related topics: Communications / Networks, IT Security, Hardware, IPv6, State & Local, Software Applications



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