For 3Com, FY 2000-01 was an eventful one. 3Com announced spinning off of its carrier business as a new company named Commworks Inc. This followed the termination of the core builder line of enterprise networking products.

However, in India, owing to legalities, 3Com remained a combined entity of two separate lines of business—the carrier networking business and the consumer/commercial networking business. And both did well in spite of the upheavals that were happening in the larger world stage. During the FY 2000-01, 3Com India emerged as the No. 4 networking products vendor in the country, doing a business of Rs 210 crore growing by 50 percent over the previous year. While the carrier division contributed Rs 108 crore, the rest Rs 102 crore was earned by the consumer/commercial division.

3Com continues its excellent run in the RAS business. The biggest consumer ISPs—VSNL, Satyam and Caltiger—are in its grasp. 3Com won contracts for the data access equipment provisioning from all six WiLL service rollouts. On the solutions side, it won contracts from Satyam for FoIP, Caltiger for enhanced IP access and Bharti Telenet for UMS.

3Com also scored an aggressive new run into a nascent yet potential networking segment—that of broadband modems. In cable modems alone, the company claims to hold around 50 percent of the market share.