Dive Brief:
- Civil infrastructure provider Univastu India Ltd. agreed to buy the assets of Cambium Networks for $5.1 million and will run the business as a standalone subsidiary, the companies announced last week.
- Univastu purchased Cambium’s ePMP and enterprise businesses and the cnMaestro management platform. Airspan last month purchased Cambium’s PTP and PMP. Airspan and Cambium will respectively retain the cnMaestro management capabilities that pertain to the particular products they are running, Cambium CEO Morgan Kurk told Channel Dive in an email.
- “We will work with customers to provide clarity on the applicable access, service and support arrangements,” Pradeep Khandagale, Univastu’s managing director and now Cambium’s chairman and managing director, wrote on LinkedIn Wednesday. “Our first priority is to listen to customers, employees, former employees, channel partners and suppliers … To the former employees who helped build these products and relationships, we warmly invite you to consider joining us in shaping the next chapter.”
Dive Insight:
Airspan’s Cambium acquisitions last month left customers and partners with more questions than answers. Airspan SVP and GM of In-Building Networks Amit Jain told Channel Dive that customers of the PMP and PTP lines could confidently expect Airspan to continue supporting cloud management of those specific lines.
“It sure would be nice if he had said cnMaestro will continue to support management of ePMP even if they didn't buy that line,” ZipLink Systems CEO David Busch wrote on LinkedIn.
Cambium has an answer to those concerns. Kurk said cnMaestro will split into two different software versions and proceed on separate product roadmaps for each parent company.
“One entity will host fixed wireless and defense products with the exception of ePMP and another will hold onto enterprise, including CnMatrix, switch and NSE, as well as ePMP,” according to Kurk.
“All devices in their current state will be given automatic routing instructions based on which product [regarding] which version they communicate with,” Kurk said. “After this initial routing information is determined, the devices will remember the correct cloud address for future communication.”
Cambium entered an administration process in the UK on Sept. 14 due to insolvency. It had laid off 53% of its workforce and was looking for buyers. Airspan announced the first bite of the apple on Sept. 22, announcing it would bring over 135 employees. On Oct. 4, Khandagale wrote that Univastu had formed an exclusive bidding arrangement with the administrators. The Indian infrastructure firm established a U.K. subsidiary on Oct. 7 to buy the rest of Cambium.
The acquisition brings Univastu into the telecom infrastructure sector.
“The company sees opportunities to support customers across fixed wireless broadband, enterprise Wi-Fi and switching while building the specialist leadership, technical capabilities and channel relationships these markets require,” Univastu wrote in a letter to the National Stock Exchange of India Limited Oct. 14.
The telco motion is already in play. The company recently won a contract with the Colossus Infra Project to design and install telephone infrastructure for India’s transit systems. The contract value amounts to approximately $1.6 million.
Univastu still needs to prove to its US customer base it is serious about its investment, analysts said.
"The damage to channel confidence is real," Maravedis Founder and Chief Analyst Adlane Fellah told Light Reading. “Competitors have spent the past two months actively courting Cambium customers, and many operators have already started qualifying alternatives. Univastu needs to give partners a clear roadmap, a support commitment, and a reason to stay within the next 90 days or the migration that's already underway will continue."
