This week the administrators of Cambium Networks sold the company’s fixed wireless and defense product lines to Airspan Networks Holdings, days after the Cayman parent’s Chapter 11 filing, the U.K. company’s entry into administration under RSM, and a September workforce cut of 260 people — 53.6% of the company — without severance. Cambium was one of fixed wireless’s founding names: the PMP 450 and PTP radios trace directly to Motorola’s Canopy and Orthogon lines and became the workhorse of wireless ISPs. The endgame took two weeks; the decline took years. The best way to show that is the chronology.
Cambium Networks — how a pioneer ran out of time. Every row links to its underlying document. Entries are VERIFIED against the source; we flag our inferences in the text below the table.
| Date | Event | Source |
| Aug 2011 | Vector Capital carves the Canopy/PMP and Orthogon/PTP businesses out of Motorola Solutions, creating Cambium — and its owner for the next 15 years | Motorola/Vector press release |
| Nov 2018 | Enters wired networking with its first Ethernet switch, the cloud-managed cnMatrix — before any enterprise acquisition | Cambium cnMatrix launch announcement |
| Jun 2019 | IPO on Nasdaq (CMBM) at $12/share; Vector remains the controlling shareholder and the company operates as a “controlled company” | IPO 424B4 prospectus (SEC) |
| Aug 2019 | Buys the Xirrus enterprise Wi-Fi business from Riverbed (initial $2.0M at close, up to $3.0M contingent) to expand its enterprise portfolio | Cambium Xirrus announcement |
| 2020–21 | Vector trims its stake in secondary offerings (Dec 2020 at $28; Jun 2021 at $48) but stays the controlling owner | Jun 2021 8-K (SEC) |
| Aug 7, 2025 | Restatement. The audit committee reports fiscal 2022 and 2023 audited statements, plus six later quarterlies, can no longer be relied on — ASC 606 variable-consideration (sales return and rebate) errors; internal control ineffective since Sep 30, 2024; auditor had changed from KPMG to Grant Thornton | 8-K, item 4.02 (SEC) |
| Late 2024 – Mar 2026 | The filing calendar never recovers: the FY2024 10-K lands more than a year late (Apr 2026), the 2025 10-Qs are batch-filed, and each miss draws another Nasdaq deficiency notice | EDGAR filing history (SEC); FY2025 10-K with going-concern warning (SEC) |
| Mar 27, 2026 | Nasdaq suspends trading; the shares move to OTC under CMBMF for continued non-compliance | Delisting 8-K (SEC) |
| Aug 25, 2026 | The Nasdaq Listing and Hearing Review Council affirms the delisting (Listing Rule 5250(c)(1)) — Cambium’s appeal fails | Delisting 8-K (SEC) |
| Sep 10, 2026 | Cash runs dry: the Cayman parent files for Chapter 11 and the U.K. company gives notice of intent to appoint administrators | Background summary |
| Sep 11, 2026 | 8-K: 260 employees cut globally (53.6%), effective immediately, no severance; the senior VP of products role is eliminated | 8-K (SEC) |
| Sep 14, 2026 | Cambium Networks Ltd, the main U.K. trading entity, enters administration; RSM partners are appointed | Company / RSM statement |
| Sep 16, 2026 | RSM: production ends for the enterprise Wi-Fi access points, NSE gateways and cnMatrix switches; fixed wireless resumes after distributor inventory sell-through; cnMaestro Cloud pledged at least to Oct 1 | RSM statement PDF |
| Sep 22, 2026 | Asset sale. Airspan acquires the fixed wireless and defense lines (PMP 450, PTP 450i/670/700, 28/60 GHz cnWave, cnReach, plus LINKPlanner/cnHeat/cnMaestro for those lines); more than 135 employees join; production restarts; terms undisclosed; ePMP is excluded | Airspan press release |
| Sep 23, 2026 | RSM: cnMaestro Cloud extended through at least end-October for the entire enterprise portfolio, with an on-premises implementation “in the coming days”; ePMP and the remaining enterprise lines are still being marketed as going concerns | RSM update PDF |
Cambium Networks — the people, in numbers. The company’s own annual reports show the workforce shrinking before the endgame began — approximately 533 full-time employees at the end of fiscal 2019, a peak of 650 (fiscal 2022), then a slide to 486 at the end of fiscal 2025. The September 2026 collapse is visible in the same series: as of September 24, 2026, about 225 employees remained at Cambium after the layoffs, and more than 135 of them had joined Airspan.
| Fiscal year | Full-time employees (as disclosed) | As of | Source |
| FY2019 | ~533 | Dec 31, 2019 | FY2019 10-K |
| FY2020 | ~512 | Dec 31, 2020 | FY2020 10-K |
| FY2021 | ~573 | Dec 31, 2021 | FY2021 10-K |
| FY2022 | ~650 | Dec 31, 2022 | FY2022 10-K |
| FY2023 | ~625 | Dec 31, 2023 | FY2023 10-K |
| FY2024 | ~553 | Dec 31, 2024 | FY2024 10-K (filed April 2026) |
| FY2025 | ~486 | Dec 31, 2025 | FY2025 10-K |
| Sep 2026 | 260 laid off (53.6%, no severance); 135+ joined Airspan | Sep 24, 2026 | Layoff 8-K · Airspan PR |
Our Viewpoint
The failed appeal was the inflection point. We read the sequence as follows: while the Nasdaq appeal was alive, Cambium still had a plausible external path to recovery — a listing, and time to work through its restatement. The August 25 affirmation closed that path, and within two weeks the endgame appeared: Chapter 11, administration, the mass layoff, and the asset sale. No party has confirmed causation, but the timeline is hard to read any other way.
The human cost is what doesn’t show up in the filings. We want to be direct about this. The 260 employees let go “effective immediately” with no severance were not a line item — they were the engineers who built some of the most widely deployed fixed wireless products in the world, the systems and support staff who kept thousands of service providers online, and a sales and channel team spread across the U.S., Europe, APAC and Africa. Even the company’s senior vice president of products lost his role the same day. Roughly 225 of the ~486 employees remained after the layoffs; after the Airspan lift-out, about 90. A former Cambium employee who spent nine years there and now sells for Airspan put it plainly in ISPreview’s reporting: “The Cambium I knew was defined by engineering excellence and a relentless focus on robust, reliable solutions… I was unaware of the extent of the financial crisis brewing behind the scenes.” The customers are collateral damage too — WISPs and defense users who built on Cambium radios and cnMaestro had their vendor path cut mid-fiscal-year, and while the Airspan sale keeps the PMP and PTP lines alive, ePMP and the enterprise portfolio (Ethernet switches, Wi-Fi devices), and the fate of cnMaestro (that manages Enterprise products) after October, remain unresolved.
650 Group researches several of the technologies we covered in this blog, including Broadband Access and Fixed Wireless Access, Routing and SD-WAN, and Security and SASE.