The European Commission has given its approval to Hewlett-Packard's $2.7 billion bid to buying networking equipment maker 3Com.

In a statement released this week, the European regulators said they had concluded their investigation of the proposed deal-focusing particularly on the router and switch market-and determined that there were no antitrust concerns.

"The Commission's investigation confirmed that the merged company would continue to face a number of global and effective competitors, giving customers the choice from a range of alternative providers for switches and routers," the EC said in a statement.

The regulators also said there were no concerns about antitrust issues in ancillary areas, such as IT services.