When pressed, Bassan-Eskanazi was cryptic about the fate of the CMTS unit. "I'm not going to comment on this," he said, adding that making a decision now would be premature, and that the company could share more details in November when it reports third quarter results. He added that BigBand still believes that both high-speed data and video will ride on networks and remain an integral requirement of cable operators.

    At the same time,  the company did confirm it has lost some CMTS deals due in part to more aggressive pricing from competitors. Arris International Inc. (Nasdaq: ARRS - message board), considered one of the CMTS players using that tactic, has said it expects to boost its share from about 25 percent to 33 percent by 2010.

    Leopold said his checks confirm that Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) and Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE: TWC - message board) are replacing older BigBand CMTS gear with Arris equipment in the newly acquired Adelphia Communications cable systems. Notter, who puts BigBand's CMTS share at just 3 percent, said some of that lost business may have gone to Motorola and Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board), the market leader.

    "In summary, we did not execute well in Q3, and we have work to do," Bassan-Eskenazi said.