I'm not criticizing Sprint, for this policy, only confirming the fact
that I received similar information about their requirements to use
Cisco equipment.
I've had my share of bad experiences with customers buying some El
Cheapo brand router and throwing it in my lap to deal with.
I have my official list of routers & CSU/DSU's that I support (Cisco's
are on that list) and for anything else the customer is on their own.
On the other hand I wasn't asking Sprint to manage my router for me
either and would hope that they would peer with any "reasonable"
router that I might have if I could demonstrate to them that I was
competent in bgp4 routing with it and that it would not cause them
any problems.