For most procurement teams, the evaluation ends at unit price and lead time. But in telecom hardware — especially at the access and aggregation layer — there's a third variable that rarely appears on the RFQ: supply continuity risk.
Chipset allocation is not linear. Marvell and CENTEC silicon, like most semiconductors, moves in cycles. During tight allocation periods, factories that don't hold buffer stock simply can't ship — regardless of how good the unit price was when you signed the PO. The cost of a delayed network rollout, a stalled OEM product launch, or a missed project deadline dwarfs any savings made at the per-unit level.
At Saga Telecom, we maintain buffer positions on key Marvell Prestera and CENTEC chipsets as a deliberate business decision — not as a side effect of over-ordering. This means predictable lead times for standard configurations, even during periods when the broader market is constrained.
Total cost of ownership in networking hardware is rarely about the switch itself. It's about deployment friction, supply predictability, and the cost of exceptions. A vendor who quotes 10% lower but delivers 6 weeks late — or can't fulfill at all during a shortage — is not a lower-cost option. The math doesn't work.
Before your next RFQ cycle, it's worth asking: does your supplier hold chipset-level buffer stock, or are they building to order against spot allocation? The answer tells you a lot about what happens when the market tightens — and it always tightens eventually.