While the third quarter is typically the slowest quarter for spending oncable broadband aggregation equipment, Infonetics' report, Cable Broadband Aggregation Hardwareand Subscribers, says it was made worse this year by the decision ofsome operators to slow down their purchasing in advance of deterioratingeconomic conditions worldwide. Downward price pressure also affected thequarter, reducing overall revenue-per-port.

"With housing starts down and consumers digging in for what appears to be along recession, major operators are beginning to slow their rollouts ofCMTS and universal edge QAM (UEQ) ports. Although Comcast, Time Warner,Cablevision, and other major North American operators are still movingforward with their DOCSIS 3.0 rollouts, they are doing so with less fervor,as it remains to be seen whether consumers will want to upgrade theirbroadband connections when budgets are already strained," said Jeff Heynen, directinganalyst for broadband and IPTV at Infonetics Research.

Other highlights from thereport:

--  ARRIS is the #1 CMTS revenue leader in North America and Central and    Latin America (CALA), while Cisco leads by far in Europe/Middle East/Africa    (EMEA) and Asia Pacific, giving them overall worldwide leadership--  Based on discussions with CMTS vendors and MSOs, Harmonic appears to    be the worldwide UEQ market share leader by far, with major wins at Comcast    and other large operators--  BigBand Networks is a strong UEQ player in switched digital video    (SDV) deployments, while ARRIS is slowly building on its win at Comcast for    UEQ deployments for modular CMTS (M-CMTS) applications--  The number of worldwide standard and wideband cable broadband    subscribers is expected to top 66 million in 2008    

Infonetics' report providesworldwide and regional forecasts and market size for cable broadbandsubscribers split by standard vs. wideband, CMTS revenue and upstream anddownstream ports, and universal edge QAM channels and revenue.

CMTS market share is provided for ARRIS, Cisco, Motorola, and others. UEQvendors tracked include ARRIS, BigBand Networks, GoBackTV, Harmonic,LiquidXStream, Motorola, RGB Networks, Tandberg TV, Teleste, and VecimaNetworks.

For report highlights, log into Infonetics' online portal from www.infonetics.com (see Broadband). Forsales, contact Larry Howard, vice president, at larry@infonetics.com or +1(408) 583-3335.

Infonetics Research (www.infonetics.com) is an international marketresearch and consulting firm serving the communications industry since1990. A leader in defining and tracking emerging and establishedtechnologies in all world regions, Infonetics helps clients plan,strategize, and compete more effectively.

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