Shifting Gears

BigBand Networks has "slightly reduced" the head count for its R&D team at its Westborough, MA office and will move more R&D resources to the Shenzhen office in China’s Guangdong province, confirmed a BigBand rep. The move comes as the vendor shifts to modular cable-modem termination systems suited for emerging DOCSIS 3.0 infrastructures. "The traditional CMTS is becoming obsolete. The modular CMTS has significant cost advantages for the operators.," said the rep. He declined to say how many Westborough jobs have been eliminated (reports put the number at more than a dozen) but said about the same number of jobs would be created in China. The company opened the Shenzhen office in March to support its other China offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai. That same month, it announced a deal with Dutch cable operator Multikabel to deploy M-CMTS equipment. BigBand is still trialing M-CMTS in the states. Reports of the layoffs first surfaced in a ThinkEquity Partners research note earlier this week.