Looks like your not telling the whole story here.....
Monday March 30, 2:43 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
CIENA Captures Bell Atlantic DWDM Business
Expands Into Local Exchange Carrier Market
LINTHICUM, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 30, 1998--CIENA Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN - news) announced today
that it has reached an agreement to supply Bell Atlantic with CIENA's dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) optical
transmission systems. Under terms of the agreement, CIENA has been initially allocated 50% of Bell Atlantic's DWDM purchases
over the next five years. General deployment is expected in the second half of 1998, subject to completion of ongoing testing.
CIENA's DWDM systems are the only DWDM systems to have completed laboratory evaluation at Bell Atlantic.
''CIENA's optical transport products will help Bell Atlantic to stay ahead of the demand for more bandwidth being generated by
the increasing growth of data and internet services,'' said Paul Lacouture, chief technology and engineering officer, Bell Atlantic.
Bell Atlantic's DWDM deployments will mark the first time a local exchange carrier (LEC) has committed to deployment of the
technology. ''This is one of the steps in Bell Atlantic's plans for an all-optical network,'' Lacouture said.
''The deployment of CIENA's MultiWave Firefly(tm) and MultiWave(R) 1600 in local exchange carrier networks is the next
logical step for CIENA's optical transmission products,'' said Patrick Nettles, CIENA's president and chief executive officer. ''The
economics and scaleability of CIENA's DWDM equipment will enable local exchange carriers like Bell Atlantic to deploy a
leading-edge technology that should handle all of their customers' bandwidth demands for the foreseeable future.''
''By winning this account, we've completed the first in a series of milestones we set for ourselves when we started building our
sales and support infrastructure for the LEC market over twelve months ago,'' stated Larry Huang, CIENA's senior vice president
of sales and marketing. ''CIENA's industry-leading technology and unparalleled experience in deploying DWDM networks should
provide Bell Atlantic with some of the critical elements it will need to deploy its next generation broadband data network.''
The supply agreement between CIENA and Bell Atlantic has no minimum purchase commitments and includes CIENA's long-haul
systems (MultiWave(R) 1600 and MultiWave Sentry(tm)), its short-haul systems (MultiWave Firefly(tm)) as well as its network
management solutions (WaveWatcher(R)).
CIENA's leadership in DWDM and optical networking has been demonstrated by the widespread acceptance and deployment of
the MultiWave(R) 1600 and MultiWave Sentry(tm) in the inter-exchange carrier market in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia.
Entry into the local exchange carrier market with products like the MultiWave Firefly(tm) further strengthens CIENA's position as
the optical networking leader. |
