ANTEC Corp. completed its purchase of Arris Interactive LLC from Nortel Networks in a stock transaction, forming Arris Group Inc., a holding company that began trading today (NASDAQ: ARRS).

Arris Group is now ANTEC's parent company, and ANTEC has changed its name to ARRIS, focusing on cable telephony "and Internet solutions as well as … hybrid fiber coax infrastructure products for voice, video and data," the company reports.

Also under the agreement, ANTEC shareholders will receive one share of ARRIS for each share of ANTEC stock they own at closing. ANTEC shareholders will own 50.8 percent of ARRIS, and Nortel, 49.2 percent.

ANTEC representatives could not be reached by CEDaily's deadline.

The company cites a Cahners In-Stat report, released today, that says cable telephony deployment has taken longer than first expected, and that relief won't occur until late 2002 or early 2003, when the industry will see widespread deployments of IP-based cable telephony.

Even so, the technology will see solid subscriber growth over the next five years — from 2.8 million at the end of 2000 to more than 15 million by 2005, In-Stat says. Revenue will reach $6.5 billion from $1 billion during the same period. Most subscribers will be in North America and Western Europe.

In-Stat is a division of Cahners, which owns CED magazine and CEDaily Direct.