Ottawa's Meriton Networks expects to cash in where giant Nortel Networks could not – with a piece of the action from British Telecom's US$19 billion plan to modernize its networking infrastructure.

While Nortel did not make the list of key suppliers for the contract announced last week, Meriton, through its partnership with Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe, will be sub-contracted to supply optical add-drop switches to Fujitsu. The switches will aggregate and transmit data to the metro core over fibre optic cables.

A Meriton spokesperson describes the deal as "bigger than anything we're ever imagined," although she could not put a dollar value on the work. She says Meriton, which currently has about 80 employees, expects to hire another 25 to 35 people over the next year.

Meriton and Fujitsu signed a partnership agreement last February, and since them Fujitsu has made a "strategic investment" of several million dollars in the company.