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Today in Health it, the story is 60 week delay on router orders shows the scale of the chip crisis. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this Week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged. I wanna thank our sponsor for today's series Healthcare.
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All right, here's today's story. This is from Bloomberg. Just picked this up this morning. Interesting. It was published last week and sort of coincides with some conversations I'm having with some CIOs. So here you go. Broadband providers are seeing delays. Of more than a year when ordering internet routers becoming yet another victim of the chip shortages, choking global supply chains and adding challenges for millions.
Still working from home. Running out of the right router would prevent a carrier from being able to add new subscribers to its network. Risking lost sales in an ever competitive broadband market. Their supply chains have become a headache because sharp coronavirus manufacturing shutdowns a year ago were exacerbated by a prolonged surge in demand for better home broadband equipment.
Says Karsten Goki, head of European Regional Business for z Xcel Communications Corp at Taiwan, based router maker since January, it's asked customers to order products a year in advance. He said, because the lead time for components like chips from Broadcom, Inc. Doubled to a year or more since then. Xcel is a major supplier of routers with customers including Norway's, Telenor, ASA, and Britain Zen Internet.
ADTRAN says the same thing. No carrier has run out of routers completely yet, but the supply chain looks strained for the next six months, so it's possible. According to Goki, we have been very close several times. He said on a video call, it could still happen. Even shipments already on route can't escape.
Global trade disruptions last week, six zero routers were on and behind. The evergreen ship, which blocked the Suez Canal according to Goki. Broadcom did not immediately respond. You get the picture. Why am I talking about this on today? In health it, because this isn't just routers. This is chips. This means anything that runs in your data center on the desktop, even in that biomed device.
May become highly constrained in the next couple of months, if not, is already highly constrained by. So what? Look at every project and determine equipment needs up to a year out. Get with your partners and determine the supplies in their pipeline. Look at alternative suppliers of the equipment. You may like going direct with your PC supplier, but in these cases, you need to look into the crevices of the supply chain to keep your standards intact.
Figure out a warehousing strategy. In the event you can't get equipment, you have a choice to make, delay the project or come off standard. I caution you to do that. Only in extreme cases I purchased used machines or even reallocate machines that have already been deployed in the enterprise to make that move a last resort.
If it is impossible, make it an inexpensive short-term move and plan for early obsolescence of the non-standard equipment. Short-term project timeline wins are a bad objective when the result is more PC bills to maintain additional vendors to work with, and complexity added to your environment. That is the opposite of what we need right now.
We need more efficiency, we need less complexity. If I were ACIA today, that is how I would be thinking about this. That's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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