Privately held American Fiber Systems (AFS), an optical fiber network provider to carriers and large enterprises, and Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), the network specialist, today announced a new partnership to deploy Ciena’s advanced, multiservice metro/regional WDM platform across multiple AFS networks in Atlanta, Alpharetta and Marietta. AFS has earned a highly regarded reputation in Atlanta and nine other markets for providing reliable, easy-to-install and highly-manageable data connections, including private line, Ethernet, wavelength and Internet access to bandwidth-intensive organizations.
AFS is making significant investments in Ciena’s technology to support AFS’s evolving bandwidth demands and service requirements throughout the greater Atlanta market. The AFS/Ciena partnership enhances AFS’s current services portfolio, providing customers with an even more cost-effective solution for metro transport. This equipment upgrade, which brings an additional 400 Gb of bandwidth to AFS’s Atlanta metro backbone, makes it easier for AFS to add new customers while enabling greater bandwidth capabilities at a better value.
“We’re continuing to invest in the Atlanta market not just to keep up with the strong demand we’re seeing in Atlanta, but also to make it easier for our customers to scale their connectivity and add bandwidth quickly,” says Rich Coyle, Senior Vice President of Operations, American Fiber Systems. “In fact, we believe the Ciena platform provides our customers with a unique business advantage.”
AFS selected Ciena’s CN 4200® FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform Family for the upgrade of its metro and access networks, deploying the CN 4200 MC for optical services from customer premises, the CN 4200 for high-volume aggregation and transport, and the CN 4200 RS for grooming and routing of traffic at major network points of presence. The partnership also leverages Ciena’s ON-Center® Network and Service Management Suite, providing AFS a unique set of tools for efficient service deployment, proactive network management and service level management.
“Making the migration to enhanced service-driven networks is not without challenges, and service providers must consider existing fiber limitations, available technology and practical migration solutions,” said Mike Aquino, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Ciena. “By choosing Ciena, AFS is guaranteeing a reliable and operationally scalable network upgrade strategy, as our CN 4200 family makes convergence strategies practical, profitable and easy to implement.”
About American Fiber Systems
American Fiber Systems (AFS) provides metropolitan fiber optical networking infrastructure, dark fiber and transport services to carriers and large enterprises. AFS enables its customers to easily and reliably connect to a city's most important points of communications presence; Internet Service Provider (ISP) and data center locations; Inter-exchange "carrier-hotels;" wireless providers and Fortune 1000 companies. AFS has deployed more than 1.2 million miles of high-capacity, high-bandwidth metropolitan fiber optic cable since 2000 in several cities, including Atlanta, Ga.; Boise, Idaho; Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Kan./Mo.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minn.; Nashville, Tenn.; Reno and Carson City Nev.; and Salt Lake City, Utah. AFS has more than 500 capacity enabled on-net buildings and supports an addressable market teledensity of more than $9 billion in annualized telecommunications services. AFS is a privately held venture-backed company.
About Ciena
Ciena specializes in network transition. We provide the flexible platforms, intelligent software and professional services to build converged networks for enhanced services and applications. With a growing global presence, Ciena leverages its heritage of practical innovation to deliver maximum performance and economic value in communications networks worldwide. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.
Note to Ciena Investors
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 6, 2008. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Contacts:
Ciena Corporation
Nicole Anderson,
410-694–5786
pr@ciena.com
or
American
Fiber Systems
A.R. Brache, 585-785–5803
abrache@afsnetworks.com
or
Investor
Contact:
Ciena Corporation
Marie Downing, 888-243–6223
ir@ciena.com
