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Technology Stocks : Ciena (CIEN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kevin G. O'Neill who wrote (6030)	1/7/1999 9:32:00 PM
From: HG	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12623

Can someone please validate my understanding of CIENs business ? SOmetime in the 80s (or was it early 90s) fibre optic cables became the norm. They carried data at 2.5GB per second. Voice, telephony and data were transmitted on the same line. But the bandwidth of the carrier signals became a problem affecting transmission speeds. CIEN has the technology, along with LU and NORTEL, to increase this bandwidth by multiplxing the channels. The technology allows multiple channels to be transmitted over the Fibre, using different frequencies. The increase in transmission speed is significant, being 80 GB per second (in that vicinity). I read somewhere that the 1.2 billion dollar industry (and growing) is shared equally by LU, NORTEL and CIEN. CIEN has 38% of the market share and advantage of lower overheads over its competitors. A few days earlier, GST became the first US carrier to optically integrate its long-haul network with portions of its local network using Ciena's technology. Being a heavywt in DWDM technology, CIEN tied up with CSCO last year to define standards for this technology. It was a smart move (a la Sun and java). Last year Telllabs and CIEN announced synergies (merger). It fell thru because at the time both companies lost large customer contracts. CIENs stock price soared as a result of the merger talks. The share swap proved too expensive after Tellabs lost customers plunging its share price. I don't have technical and financial data, but you can look that up. Stock is undervalued, but it is beaten up. Psychologically it is scarred. Large buyout potential. Is my assessment correct ?