The ending to the Mangrove Systems saga got a little sad yesterday, as Carrier Access Corp. (Nasdaq: CACS) revealed its acquisition of the company set it back less than originally announced.

In its earnings release yesterday, Carrier Access noted its cash reserves were down by $7.4 million upon acquiring the assets of Mangrove, which closed its doors in January. That's a tad less than the $8 million price estimated when Carrier Access announced the all-cash deal last month. (See CACS Reports Results, Carrier Access Gets Mangrove, Mangrove Closes Its Doors.)

Neither number is particularly close to the $55.2 million that Mangrove raised in three rounds. And the funding total would have been $62 million had Mangrove received all of a planned $20 million third round, announced last year. (See Mangrove Secures New Funding.)

So, the third time wasn't the charm for Mangrove founder Jonathan Reeves. He'd previously sold Sahara Networks to Cascade Communications for $212 million, following that up with the 2000 sale of Sirocco Systems to Sycamore Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: SCMR) for $2.9 billion. (See Sycamore Gains Access.)

But it's not all doom and gloom for Mangrove staffers, as Carrier Access says it's hired 30 of them. Mangrove's Piranha 100 and 600 products live on as the Carrier Access EdgeFlex 100 and 600. Both products were running in live customer networks, and Mangrove, even after closing, had planned to keep staff around to maintain the products.

Piranha is a line of pseudowire transport systems that ended up being targeted at wireless backhaul, particularly for 3G services.

That might be a help to Carrier Access, which cited slow 3G deployments as a reason for lowering its first-quarter forecast. (See Carrier Access Lowers Forecast.) While the first quarter met the new forecast, at least one analyst was unhappy with the result.

"Our biggest concern is with what we perceive to be a huge disconnect between our view of reality and management's view of 3G deployments," wrote Anton Wahlman of ThinkEquity LLC , in a note issued this morning.

Wahlman considers Cingular Wireless , Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S), and Verizon Wireless to be "pretty much done rolling out 3G networks," adding that "for this spend, [Carrier Access] was apparently not there."

But Carrier Access is an incumbent at T-Mobile US Inc. , the fourth largest U.S. operator, and could get some business when T-Mobile's 3G rollout starts later this year, Wahlman wrote.

— Craig Matsumoto, West Coast Editor, Light Reading