Bain Capital and Huawei Technologies will buy IP networking specialist 3Com for more than $2 billion, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Bain would be the majority owner.
3Com and Huawei were partners in a joint venture, Huawei-3Com, founded in 2003. 3Com bought out Huawei’s share in the venture late last year. At the time, Huawei said its divestment would allow it to concentrate on its core technology of fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) systems.
3Com was founded by Bob Metcalfe, credited with inventing Ethernet. 3Com has been one of the key proponents of Ethernet and IP-based networking in the corporate environment.