World Wide Packets signs China contract – Spokane firm will sell network-management equipment to network provider

World Wide Packets, based in Spokane Valley, announced Friday it has signed a deal to sell network-management equipment to the third-largest Internet provider in the People’s Republic of China.

The deal is an open-ended contract with Great Wall Broadband Network Service Ltd., a Beijing-based network provider that has 4 million subscribers and expects steady growth for the next several years, said David Curry, CEO of World Wide Packets.

Tom Sowa
Staff writer

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business-news-story.asp?date=041704&ID=s1510689&cat=section.business

World Wide Packets designs and makes bandwidt
h-management devices and software. The company has sold its products to companies in Dubai, the United Kingdom and across the United States.

Curry said the size of the contract will be determined by Great Wall Broadband’s expansion in coming years.

But he expects the company to buy roughly $1 million in World Wide Packet products this year, and much more the following year. Eventually, the sale could be the company’s largest, Curry said.

Great Wall Broadband has subscribers in 30 Chinese cities. It has announced plans to offer enhances business services in 18 others, Curry said.

The contract is expected to help World Wide Packets sell more products to other service providers in China, Curry said.

That country is engaged in a massive build-out of digital networks for voice, video and data services. World Wide Packets also is pitching its products to China’s other two large carriers, China Netcom and China Telecom, both of which are expanding and adding customers, he said.

The sale puts a large exclamation mark on the quality of World Wide Packets’ products, Curry added. Great Wall looked at competing offers from Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks and a number of Chinese equipment companies, he said.

“They selected us. Not bad for little old World Wide Packets, from Spokane,” he said.

Great Wall Broadband was created in 2000 and operates five regional branch companies across China. Its CEO, Sun Ziqiang, said in a prepared release that Great Wall selected World Wide Packets “because it offered the only solution that provided the scalability necessary to provide our customers with a breadth of services, while at the same time giving us the ability to continue to add subscribers to our network.”