KPNQwest to Host, Resell Fast’s Intranet Search in Europe

[London, ENGLAND] KPNQwest, one of the largest business ISPs in Europe,
announced Thursday a three-year agreement with Norwegian search engine
developer Fast Search & Transfer to resell Fast’s intranet search
services in 15 European countries.

Through its growing network of facilities which it calls
“mega-CyberCenters,” KPNQwest will host Fast’s European search
engine operations. It will sell the services as part of its virtual
ISP product while also offering them to its base of 75,000
business customers.

Rhett Williams, chief marketing officer of KNPQwest, said that
Fast’s search services were winning over major European customers,
and the opportunity of hosting them was highly supportive of
KPNQwest’s strategy of building top class hosting centers.

“Fast intranet search will provide our business customers with
an essential service: high speed searching of corporate Web sites,
data and documents, all from a simple search bar user interface,”
said Williams.

A home-grown European company, Fast has expanded its marketing
overseas, opening offices in Boston and San Francisco in the
U.S. and in Manchester and London in the U.K. It has partnered
with some top companies, including Dell, Exodus, Jazztel, Lycos,
Looksmart, Tibco and Scandinavia Online.

Rob Fisher, chief executive of Fast Search & Transfer, said
KPNQwest’s new EuroRings macro-capacity fiber network creates
almost unlimited bandwidth for Fast to deliver its services to
customers across Europe.

KPNQwest is deploying a 20,000 kilometer fiber-optic network
connecting 50 cities around Europe and already offers a pan-European
digital subscriber line (DSL) service together with many other
IP-based services.

“We believe that this important reseller relationship will have a
very positive impact on our European business as KPNQwest continues
to grow its business throughout Europe,” said Fisher.

KPNQwest now has twelve CyberCenters in operation and has announced
plans to build another eighteen of them. They provide Web-hosting,
application sharing and telehousing services.