SPW&L Telecom Upgrades Municipal Fiber Optic Network with Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery Platforms

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that Sun Prairie Water & Light (SPW&L), a municipal utility company based in Sun Prairie, Wis., has deployed its Carrier Ethernet Service Delivery (CESD) platforms to upgrade the service delivery capabilities of the utility’s fiber optic network throughout its serving area. The network is run by the utility’s communication services division, SPW&L Telecom, and is already connecting all 12 locations of the Sun Prairie School District, multiple locations for WPPI Energy, Brooks Tractor, Laker Software and other business customers, as well as providing the communications infrastructure for the utility’s smart water grid.

SPW&L Telecom offers a variety of point-to-point and point-to-multipoint wide area network and Internet connections over the network that combine the reliability and performance of traditional carrier services with the cost-effectiveness of Ethernet. SPW&L Telecom’s network was designed and is managed on a 24x7 basis by its long-time partner, INOC, a global provider of outsourced network operations center (NOC) monitoring and reporting services. With a primary NOC in Madison, Wis., and a disaster recovery NOC near Chicago, Ill., INOC specializes in managing fiber optic networks to ensure their security, performance and availability to meet the strict service level agreements between service providers and their end customers.

"As a locally owned and operated utility, our focus is always on providing reliable, low-cost services to our customers that deliver true value in this competitive communications market,” said Gary Sanders, general manager of SPW&L Telecom. "By upgrading to advanced Carrier Ethernet technology, we have increased our network capacity, reliability and ability to manage the traffic of different customers across the network so we can deliver rigorous service level agreements at competitive prices combined with our unwavering focus on local customer service.”

In addition to its education and business customers, SPW&L’s water utility division has deployed Ciena’s CESD platforms at its water towers, well houses and reservoirs as the communications infrastructure for its new Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system for intelligently monitoring and managing its water distribution facilities. By leveraging its own fiber network and fast, reliable Gigabit Ethernet connections, the utility was able to eliminate the cost and inefficiency of its old solution that required patching together leased lines from the local telephone company. SPW&L plans to implement a similar solution for its electricity facilities next year.

SPW&L Telecom consulted with INOC about upgrading the fiber network in order to add greater bandwidth capacity, reliability and traffic management to the network it originally deployed in 1999. Brian Parker, manager of network engineering at INOC, commented, "INOC’s goal is to ensure that our customers get a reliable, high performance fiber optic network that meets their immediate and long-term capacity goals. We selected Ciena’s CESD platforms because of the resiliency capabilities, PBB-TE support, and the OA&M feature set that will enable more robust monitoring to address any connectivity or performance management issues.”

Deployed by more than 100 customers worldwide, Ciena’s CESD portfolio is a family of service delivery and aggregation platforms that address a wide range of application, service, market and access technology requirements. The CESD products deployed in the SPW&L Telecom network include the CN 5305™ Service Aggregation Switch and CN 3920™, CN 3940™ and CN 3960™ Service Delivery Switches.

"This deployment underscores the power and simplicity of our Carrier Ethernet solutions. As part of a public power company, SPW&L Telecom has the rights-of-way to build a municipal network, but as a customer-owned, non-profit company it needs to do so as cost-effectively as possible,” said Mike Aquino, senior vice president, global field operations at Ciena. "In working closely with SPW&L Telecom, INOC knew CIENA was the best choice for creating a feature-rich Carrier Ethernet network with carrier-class reliability and intelligent software to automate and accelerate the process for provisioning, delivering and managing services to multiple customers.”

About Ciena

Ciena specializes in practical network transition. We offer leading network infrastructure solutions, intelligent software and a comprehensive services practice 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. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

About INOC

INOC is a 24x7 NOC and global provider of outsourced NOC monitoring and reporting services for enterprises and carriers. From a primary NOC in Madison, Wis., and a Disaster Recovery NOC near Chicago, Ill., our 24x7 staff provides a hands-on approach to problem resolution. INOC proactively processes critical IT support issues and delivers timely information to improve the uptime, availability and performance of applications, servers, and networks. A proprietary web portal, iMonitor QuickView, provides extensive reporting capabilities and visibility into IT infrastructure monitoring and support activity in real-time. INOC cost-effectively integrates 24x7 NOC support into a client’s existing IT operation to deliver greater uptime.

About Sun Prairie Water & Light

Sun Prairie Water & Light (SPW&L) is a locally owned and operated electric and water utility, serving more than 13,500 customers throughout the Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, region. The Telecom Division of SPW&L offers fiber optic Internet and wide area network connectivity, providing area businesses and organizations with a variety of Internet, voice, high-speed data and video services.

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 March 5, 2010. 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.