Lucent Technologies and World Wide Packets have signed a global reseller agreement and announced their first major customer today as well.

KPN has signed Lucent to supply network equipment, software and services for its fiber-to-the-premises rollout of Ethernet services to businesses throughout The Netherlands. As part of the KPN contract, Lucent will supply WWP Ethernet point-to-point CPE.

The two companies have been working in a partnership for about a year, according to WWP President and CEO Dave Curry.

“We have been actively bidding on a range of projects with them in partnership mode, with the primary focus being on Europe,” Curry said. “This agreement formalizes it. We think Lucent will be a robust pipeline for us, with a wide range of opportunities.”

KPN is in the process of building an FTTP network through The Netherlands, targeting business customers of all sizes with Ethernet services. Once completed, the KPN deployment will be WWP’s largest, Curry said.

This is a multiyear deployment which in time will be the largest,” he said. We do have some things under way right now that are somewhat similar in scope. This is another validation of the carrier Ethernet solution that WWP has established a leadership position in.”

“Lucent is delighted to be working once again with KPN to supply value-added services to their subscribers,” said Huub de Klerk, vice president Sales North Europe at Lucent Technologies. “The newly established relationship with World Wide Packets has provided another valuable set of tools that complement our existing portfolio and further expands our ability to meet our customers' need for comprehensive, end-to-end solutions.”

Under the agreement with World Wide Packets, Lucent will resell key elements of the LightningEdge family of products.

WWP already has agreements with Ericsson and Tellabs, Curry said. As the company has expanded its focus to include the carrier market, reseller agreements with larger companies becomes necessary.

“Over the course of last year and a half, we have been focusing on carriers, and they are looking for the major equipment and integration services companies to take on a much broader role,” he said. “They are looking of the comfort of acquiring our products through that relationship.”