Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that it has been awarded a contract with GTS Central Europe (GTS CE), which is the fast-growing alternative carrier in the Central and Eastern Europe region, for Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery solutions with connection-oriented Ethernet technology. GTS CE has deployed the platforms in its aggregation and access network layers to allow the operator to offer a broad range of carrier-class services while leveraging the simplicity and cost efficiency of Ethernet.

GTS CE boasts an extensive regional infrastructure across its primary countries of operation, which include Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania, and serves a large number of fully integrated international, national and local metropolitan area networks across those geographies. The operator provides fixed voice, data, IP, Ethernet, MPLS and DSL broadband services to business and residential customers, as well as services to other carriers, mobile operators and providers of content, applications and Internet services.

To answer the growing enterprise demand in Czech Republic for fast packet service delivery, GTS CE decided to expand its existing Ethernet network to cover the entire country. The carrier considered several scenarios to build up its network while simplifying its architecture, reducing operational expenditure (OPEX) and ensuring seamless maintenance and troubleshooting.

“The demand for fast and reliable packet services has been steadily growing among our business customers for some time now. The new Carrier Ethernet infrastructure from Ciena is instrumental in our ability to deliver new innovative services with exceptional Quality of Service in meeting those needs, while also ensuring that operational costs are under control,” said Ignacio Irurita, CTO at GTS Central Europe.

Ciena was chosen following a proof of concept exercise in the GTS CE office in Prague, which successfully demonstrated the key deliverables: service transparency, path redundancy and Quality of Service (QoS). The new network is based on a number of products from Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery portfolio, including the CN 5305™ Service Aggregation Switch, the recently-announced CN 3940™ and CN 3960™ Service Delivery Switches, as well as the LE-311v™ Service Delivery Switch, which proved particularly valuable for its ability to optimize traffic over microwave links while meeting the stringent QoS requirements. As part of the deployment, GTS is also installing a number of the new CN 5140™ Service Aggregation switches, which feature extended temperature resistance capabilities and can be mounted in outdoor cabinets.

“In the current macroeconomic climate, operators are faced with two conflicting issues. On one hand, data-hungry applications drive demand for more bandwidth. On the other hand, profitability remains a key priority, which requires them to be disciplined with expenditures and operational costs,” said Francois Locoh-Donou, Ciena’s vice president and general manager for the EMEA region. “Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery portfolio is designed to allow carriers like GTS CE to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory trends by building reliable and scalable networks that are easy to manage and help drive reductions in carrier OPEX.”

About GTS Central Europe

GTS Central Europe (GTS CE) is a multi-layered infrastructure based provider of integrated telecommunications solutions for those countries of Central and Eastern Europe lying between Frankfurt and Istanbul. Using its own regional fiber network GTS CE provides fixed voice, data, IP (Internet Protocol), MPLS and broadband services primarily to business customers as well as services to other telecoms carriers, mobile operators and providers of content. GTS CE’s primary countries of operation are Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania with network extensions and local partnerships into the neighboring countries of the Ukraine, Baltic States, Bulgaria, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Moldova and Turkey. GTS CE has more than 1200 employees with EUR 436 m revenue and EUR 77 m EBITDA in 2008. For further information, please visit www.gtsce.com.

About Ciena

Ciena specializes in the transition to service-driven networks. We provide flexible platforms, intelligent software and professional services to help our customers use their networks to fundamentally change the way they compete. With a global presence, Ciena leverages its heritage of practical innovation to deliver maximum performance and economic value in communications networks worldwide. We routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on our website at 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 4, 2009. 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.