Carrier equipment maker Soapstone winding down operations

Company born of Avici Systems’ exit from the router market

By Jim Duffy, Network World
June 18, 2009 02:13 PM ET

Soapstone Networks, the company born of Avici Systems' exit from the router market, is liquidating operations.

Soapstone made network controllers for carriers. It recently reduced its workforce from 50 to 14.

Liquidation of operations has been approved by the Soapstone board. The company is now awaiting shareholder approval of the plan.

The board decided to wind down operations after unsuccessfully seeking a buyer for the company and exploring other strategic alternatives.

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"The Company and its external advisors, including its financial advisor Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, devoted substantial time and effort in identifying potential buyers or strategic partners and entered into negotiations with several potential partners; however, that process did not yield a potential transaction which the Board viewed as reasonably likely to provide greater realizable value to its stockholders than the complete dissolution and liquidation of the Company in accordance with the Plan of Liquidation," Soapstone said in a press release.

Avici was founded in 1997 as a developer of terabit-scale routers for the core of IP networks. It had limited success – one customer, AT&T was responsible for about 90% of the company's revenue – before exiting the router market in 2007.

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