Bharti Expands i2i Submarine Cable with Ciena

Coherent optics and advanced network management solutions add intelligent network capabilities, delivering bandwidth-intensive services across important regional gateway

HANOVER, Md., U.S.A. and NEW DELHI — 03/19/2014

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ:CIEN, news, filings), the network specialist, today announced that i2i, a venture of Bharti Airtel Limited, has completed a submarine network upgrade spanning from India to Singapore using Ciena’s converged packet optical and network management solutions. The upgrade leverages a flexible 100G ROADM-based infrastructure that has enabled Bharti to increase capacity over the i2i cable and respond to a surging demand for high-bandwidth data services driven by both enterprise applications and an increasing use of mobile bandwidth across the region. Ciena’s network management solutions bring expanded intelligence to the i2i cable, delivering rapid service turn-up & proactive fault recovery, features that are critical to managing a high-performance submarine link.

Key Facts:

• i2i is a submarine cable owned by Bharti Airtel Limited of India. The high-capacity cable spans 3,200 kilometers and connects Singapore and Chennai, India.
• Powered by Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with WaveLogic 3 processors, this submarine upgrade leveraged a combination of coherent optical technology and wavelength selective switching to enable rapid remote configuration of traffic across the i2i cable. A commitment to intelligent and scalable network designs, both key elements of Ciena’s OPⁿ architecture, allowed i2i to implement this upgrade quickly, ensuring that new capacity was ready and available according to Bharti’s customers’ demand.
• With Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System, i2i also benefits from simple point-and-click service provisioning to enable faster service turn-up and end-to-end visibility of network performance. OneControl also allows i2i to meet the demanding service level agreements of wholesale clients and perform rapid remote troubleshooting in the event of a network outage.
• This deployment builds on a long-standing relationship between Bharti and Ciena. Ciena’s suite of converged packet optical solutions plays an important role in the company’s network, providing high-capacity long-haul and regional services.

Executive Comments:

• “This upgrade is an excellent example of how the sophistication of Ciena’s converged packet optical and unified management solutions can help transform our customer’s networks to seize new business opportunities. Working with submarine operators to understand the demands being placed on their cables has given Ciena the expertise needed to help our customers scale their networks intelligently, turning new capacity rapidly into new sources of revenue.”
  – Ryan Perera, Country Head for India, Ciena   

Technology Background:

• Ciena is the pioneer and market leader of coherent optical technology with 35,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces shipped to over 150 customers across the globe, with more than 35 million coherent kilometers deployed.
• Ciena’s latest generation of WaveLogic coherent optical processors allows network operators to maximize reach, capacity, flexibility, and reliability of their submarine networks with an operational focus on ease-of-deployment, cost efficiency, and protection of network investments. WaveLogic leverages industry-leading optical networking technology advancements that together offer network operators several key benefits, over and above simply moving to 100G line rates.
• Ciena’s OneControl Unified Network Management solution offers a comprehensive set of features to manage mission-critical submarine networks with unprecedented visibility and control. This unified management approach decreases time for fault recognition, isolation, and resolution. Early detection, diagnosis, and prioritization of trouble spots within the network allow service providers to resolve problems proactively, before they affect revenue streams.

Supporting Resources:

• Product Overview: Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical Platform
• Product Overview: OneControl Unified Management System
• Chalk Talk Video: WaveLogic 3
• Application Note: Enabling a Bigger and Smarter Network with WaveLogic 3

About Bharti Airtel Limited
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 4 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company’s product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 289 million customers across its operations at the end of January 2014. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com

About Ciena
Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) 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. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPⁿ architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter @Ciena or on LinkedInhttp://www.linkedin.com/company/ciena. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use.

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 in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 7, 2014. 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.

Ryan Saxby Hill
Ciena Corporation
613-716-8062
rhill@ciena.com

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