Latin American Nautilus Upgrades Submarine Network with Ciena’s Coherent 40G Technology

Upgrade brings significant capacity increase to key route across Central, Caribbean and South America with simple, in-service path to 100G

HANOVER, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that Latin American Nautilus (LANautilus), Telecom Italia Sparkle Group Operations in the Americas, has upgraded its submarine network with Ciena’s market-leading coherent 40G optical networking solutions. The newly enhanced network will enable LANautilus to increase its total network capacity, effectively quadrupling the amount of information transmitted per wavelength, and allowing faster support to service provider and enterprise customers in the Caribbean, South and Central America, all the while using its existing fiber infrastructure to support growing bandwidth requirements.

Key Facts:

• LANautilus is part of the Telecom Italia Sparkle Group and operates as a wholesale telecommunications service provider that delivers managed bandwidth, Internet/IP transit and co-location services to carrier and enterprise customers across its 30,000 km fiber optic ring. Its submarine system integrates cable stations in South, Central and North America with Telecom Italia’s Sparkle Global Backbone.
• LANautilus will be able to provide its customers with 40G services along a 16,000 km stretch of its network, connecting customers in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Panama, Venezuela, and St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands through Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic^™ coherent optical line interfaces.
• Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System will deliver seamless end-to-end management across the 6500 and Common Photonic Layer (CPL) platforms providing LANautilus with all the tools needed for efficient multi-layer service activation, assurance, SLA monitoring, and accurate management of the dynamic nature of an intelligent network.

Executive Comments:

• “We are now able to offer our customers high-capacity bandwidth services to support the delivery of IP, managed bandwidth, HD video and cloud computing, among other applications, at speeds that scale to 40G. Further, Ciena’s intelligent software capabilities will allow us to combine competitive and effective service level agreements with our service offering.”
  - Mario Pirro, CTO, Telecom Italia Sparkle Group

• “Submarine networks are uniquely susceptible to disruptions—both natural and man-made—due to their great expanse and exposure to disparate weather patterns. With Ciena’s 6500 Packet Optical Platform equipped with coherent technology and intelligent software, our customers are provided with a comprehensive and cost-effective undersea solution that enables scalable, high-speed bandwidth service delivery using existing fiber optic cables.”
  - Fabio Medina, Vice President and General Manager, Central and Latin America, Ciena

Technology Leadership:

• Ciena's WaveLogic coherent receiver technology enables unobtrusive 40G/100G upgrades to existing submarine networks with only the addition of new terminal equipment, significantly extending the life of existing cable plants and further lengthening its lifespan.
• Ciena is the pioneer and market leader of coherent optical technology with more than 16,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces shipped to more than 100 customers across the globe, with more than 15 million coherent kilometers deployed.
• Ciena’s technology powers many of the world’s largest, most mission-critical most performance-demanding networks, representing thousands of nodes and hundreds of thousands of circuits. In addition, Ciena’s intelligent software capabilities substantially lowers network OPEX with auto-discovery, low-touch service creation, and zero-touch restoration. It also cuts CAPEX by eliminating the need for reserved restoration bandwidth.

Supporting Resources:

• Application Note: Submarine Solutions for an Increasingly Competitive Market
• Application Note: Coherent Optical Processing for High-Capacity Networks
• Data Sheet: 6500 Packet-Optical Platform
• White Paper: Survivable Submarine Optical Networks
• White Paper: Intelligent Self-Healing Mesh Networks
• Video: Ciena’s 100G Technology Increases the Capacity of Major Submarine Networks
• Video: What is Coherent Optical Networking?
• Video: Ciena Intelligent Infrastructure Solutions

About Latin American Nautilus

Latin American Nautilus (LANautilus) is Telecom Italia Sparkle Group operations in the Americas and provides high quality wholesale value added telecommunication services with a robust state of the art 30,000 km fiber optic network fully integrated with the Telecom Italia Sparkle Global Backbone. For more information, visit http://www.lanautilus.com/eng/home.asp.

About Telecom Italia Sparkle

Telecom Italia Sparkle S.p.A. (TI Sparkle) is the wholly-owned Telecom Italia Group (NYSE:TI) subsidiary with the mission to develop and consolidate the Italian telco’s international services business. As a leading global carrier, TI Sparkle offers a full range of voice, mobile data, Internet protocol (IP) and bandwidth solutions to fixed and mobile operators, Internet service providers (ISPs), Media and Content providers and to Multinational enterprises.

Find out more about Telecom Italia Sparkle at www.tisparkle.com.

About Ciena

Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. With focused innovation, Ciena brings together the reliability and capacity of optical networking with the flexibility and economics of Ethernet, unified by services and software that delivers the industry’s leading network automation. We routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on our website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

Note to Ciena Investors

Forward-looking statements. 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 September 5, 2012. 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.