'30-year brand disappearing overnight': Aussie tech pioneer NetComm ditches name after $160m takeover

Australian telco equipment manufacturer and local tech success story NetComm will relinquish its 37-year-old business name after a $161 million takeover by US-based Casa Systems was finalised on Monday.

The move has stoked fears internally about further restructuring at the company, which employs about 300 people in Australia. But NetComm's interim chief executive Steve Collins downplayed chances of job cuts to rank and file workers under the new ownership.

Outgoing NetComm chairman Justin Milne.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

"At the very top of the company there will probably be a few positions where you don't need two of [them] in kind of management," he said. "But in terms of the majority of the workforce and people who are doing sales and development and all the work, that's what Casa is buying. So there are no changes envisaged there."

NetComm, which was listed on the ASX, was established in 1982 by a small team that developed Australia's first dial-up modem. It quietly advanced to become a data communications company that supplied technology to the National Broadband Network (NBN) as well as to local telco operators such as Exetel, TPG, Telstra and Optus.

Staff were told of the name change news on Friday and some were not happy, sources said.

"What is going to cause the biggest stir is that the Americans have taken the decision to immediately axe the NetComm brand," one told the Herald and The Age. "A lot of people at the company are really upset about that. You are talking about a 30-year brand disappearing overnight."

NetComm board member David Stewart departs as part of the acquisition.Credit: Peter Braig

The full NetComm board have already departed including former ABC chairman and Telstra executive Justin Milne, Ken Sheridan, Stuart Black, David Spence, David Stewart and Jacqueline Korhonen.

"The board was always going to be an agreed casualty, if you like, of the arrangement, because Casa is buying the company and it is delisting from the ASX," Mr Collins said.

Mr Collins himself has relinquished his interim chief executive officer title to Casa's president and chief executive officer Jerry Guo.

Mr Collins said he believed the company would be better able to compete against the likes of Nokia and Ericsson for the building of 5G networks locally after the deal.

Responding to criticism about the axing of its name, Mr Collins said NetComm was not as consumer-facing as it used to be in the '90s and therefore wouldn't suffer substantially from its loss.

"Having multiple brands really doesn't make sense," Collins said. "In terms of existing products out there in the field, it's not like we're a Coca-Cola or a Nike or a big consumer brand.

"There’s no real urgent need for us to go out into the field and rebadge things or worry about trying to change brands and spending a whole bunch of money.

"There are employees here who've been here for 20 years, so I'm sure there’s some emotional attachment to the brand. I have to say though, one thing that NetComm has done really well is that it's changed enormously from year to year to stay current with technology. And I think to be at NetComm means to succeed requires change."