Adaptive Broadband cuts 60% of staff

(Telephony) Feeling the effects of a disappearing domestic market, broadband fixed-wireless vendor Adaptive Broadband has cut its work force from 150 to 60 employees.

Those workers who remain will focus on product enhancements and improving installation and product deployment, rather than adding new features or building new products, the company said.

Adaptive Broadband’s domestic customers--CLECs, ISPs and IXCs--have been hurting. The market is better internationally, but it’s not enough to carry the whole staff and survive financially, said Alan Geddes, the company’s CFO.

“There are a couple areas of Adaptive’s marketplace that have dried up domestically,” he said. “Internationally, we don’t have the same kind of situation.”

Overseas, it’s a waiting game.

“We are already aligned with a number of fairly large providers and are awaiting bandwidth allocations, so that those providers will have the known bandwidth and will … make the commitment, so they can actually move into the marketplace,” said Geddes.

In other words, there’s promise but not enough substance to overcome the domestic doldrums.

“Very clearly, this was a financially driven decision … to make sure the company is going to be around for the recovery of the domestic marketplace,” Geddes said.

He emphasized that the layoffs were not directly linked to the breakdown of a deal in which Adaptive would have been acquired by Western Multiplex, which fell apart early this year when Adaptive’s economic situation became apparent.

“That was pretty much an independent situation,” he said.

Adaptive’s fixed-wireless technologies are used for “last-mile” delivery of merged data services, including streaming video, voice and high-speed Internet access.

Those customers who are deploying the product “are finding that it meets their expectations and works according to its specifications, (so) we don’t have the need for the same type of R&D support that we’ve had in the past,” Geddes said.

Adaptive is using the personnel cuts to give it the financial wherewithal to weather the economic storm, Geddes said.

“Realistically speaking, from everything we hear, it could be later on this year, or possibly even early next year, before the domestic market comes back,” he said. “We want to make sure that Adaptive Broadband is around to realize the potential that is has in the domestic marketplace.”