Meriton Networks announced a new $54 million round of funding today led by new investors, bringing the five-year-old equipment vendor's total funding to about $100 million.

VantagePoint Venture Partners and Nomura International--the six-year-old subsidiary of a Japanese firm--led the oversubscribed $54-million series-C round, Meriton said, with help from all of the company's existing investors, including Desjardins Venture Capital Group, Newbury Ventures, Primaxis Technology Ventures, RBC Capital Partners, Sierra Ventures, VenGrowth and Venture Coaches/Skypoint Capital.

"An awful lot of this fund will go toward supporting a sales and support organization, expanding it globally and trying to address not only direct opportunities and sales but also to establish channels and continue to establish best-of-breed partners," said Meriton chief executive Michael Pascoe. "Some of it will be targeted to ongoing development opportunities because, while we feel very strong about our products at this stage and their differentiation, you have to stay ahead of the curve."

Meriton claims to have 10 customers in North America for its optical add/drop switch, most of which are second- and third-tier carriers and at least one of which is a large banking company. The vendor began targeting tier-one carriers in March, when it named Pascoe CEO, and is currently pursuing a large optical multiplexing request for proposals from Verizon Communications.

Meriton also has a partnership with Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe and was chosen to help supply equipment for British Telecom's $19-billion 21st Century network initiative this year.