Spirit Selects Ciena for Network Upgrade

Carolina wholesale carrier deploys optical switching and control plane software to increase network capacity and resiliency LINTHICUM, Md. — 08/8/2012

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings), the network specialist, today announced that Spirit Communications, a leader in North and South Carolina business telecommunication services, will use Ciena technology, including the 5430 Packet-Optical Reconfigurable Switching System (RSS) and OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane software, to modernize and further enhance its transport network. Spirit Communications, the first in the Carolinas to deploy the 5430 RSS, will use Ciena’s technology to differentiate its service offerings and increase the programmability, flexibility and resiliency of its network to better serve its customers’ increasing demand for bandwidth capacity.

Key Facts:

• Spirit is a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) and Carrier Services provider in North and South Carolina that operates its own network to provide innovative communication solutions to commercial businesses, state and federal government agencies, healthcare organizations and telecommunications providers throughout the Carolinas. Additionally, its partnerships with major telecommunications carriers allow Spirit to provide worldwide connectivity.
• Ciena’s 5430 RSS will link Spirit’s major point-of-presence (POP) locations across the Carolinas. The upgraded network will support an increase in switching capacity at each location to serve existing TDM traffic migrated from legacy systems, as well as advanced Optical Transport Network (OTN) and Carrier Ethernet protocols, for increasing demands today and in the future.

• Additionally, by combining Ciena’s 5430 switching system with OneConnect, both key elements of the Ciena’s OPⁿ architecture for programmable networks, Spirit is able to differentiate its service offering with mesh restoration, improved network resiliency and service availability, beyond what would be possible with a competitive platform.

• Spirit will now have the opportunity to differentiate its optical and private line service offerings and increase revenue by providing:
  • Fast turn-up of services;
  • High-resiliency services based on mesh restoration, ensuring protection against multiple failures in a cost-effective manner;
  • Low-latency services that guarantee latency measures to the end-customers; and,
  • Optical VPN services that interconnect multiple customer locations at high capacity.

• Combined with Ciena’s 4200 Advanced Services Platform and 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, which are both already deployed in the network, the 5430 will help Spirit carry additional traffic without the need to build an entirely new network.

• Spirit  will also use Ciena’s advanced network management solution, which provides simple, cost-effective and integrated management capabilities.

Executive Comments:

• “By deploying Ciena’s optical switching and control plane technology, we are able to establish a high-availability mesh network between the major POP locations within our footprint across the Carolinas. Additionally, the network enhancements will allow us to scale our network, both now and in the future, to support our customers’ increasing demand for Carrier Ethernet services, wireless backhaul and data center interconnectivity.” – Greg Guerra, EVP business development and product management at Spirit

• “Our OPⁿ programmable network architecture is ideal for network operators like Spirit to improve their competitive advantage by providing enhanced service resiliency, improved service-turn up time, low-latency and guaranteed latency services, which will help them to better monetize  their networks. With Ciena’s 5430 and OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane software, this network upgrade will allow Spirit to cost-effectively scale and enhance its transport network to efficiently create and deliver high-capacity, premium services.” – Chad Whalen, vice president and general manager, North America field organization at Ciena

Technology Background:

• Ciena’s 5430 platform is optimized for cost-effective, scalable and intelligent bandwidth management, enabling efficient aggregation, grooming, and tiered protection of SONET/SDH and OTN traffic types. The platform is powered by Ciena’s market-leading OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane software, which allows operators to automate labor-intensive operations including planning, provisioning, and inventory management, while dramatically increasing network resiliency and availability.

• Ciena’s leadership in control plane software stems from a 12-year history of innovation and live field deployments in some of the world’s largest, most mission-critical and most performance-demanding networks, representing thousands of nodes and hundreds of thousands of circuits.

• More than 90 percent of field-deployed Ciena Packet-Optical Switching systems run Ciena’s control plane for automated service creation, mesh restoration and service differentiation with some customers reporting unprecedented 99.9999 percent (six-9s) reliability due to the performance and robustness of Ciena’s control plane software.

• Ciena’s 4200 Family optimizes WDM transport with integrated switching and services management while addressing performance and cost requirements for telecom infrastructure and enterprise services.

Supporting Resources:

• Product Overview: 5430 Reconfigurable Service Switch
• Product Overview: OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane
• Product Overview: ON-Center Network and Service Management Suite
• Whitepaper: Intelligent Optical Control Plane Architecture

About Spirit Communications Spirit Communications is the premier provider of telecommunication services in North and South Carolina. It operates its own cutting-edge MPLS network and provides innovative voice, data and Internet solutions to a cross section of businesses, government agencies and healthcare organizations throughout the Southeast. It provides world-class carrier services to telecommunications providers throughout the southeast utilizing the most advanced technologies and network speeds available today.

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 June 6, 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.

Jamie Moody Ciena Corporation (877) 857-7377 pr@ciena.com

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