CIENA-Laurel Partnership Supports Rapid Growth Of Spanish ISP Customer Base

[March 18, 2004]

CIENA-Laurel Partnership Supports Rapid Growth Of Spanish ISP Customer Base

At CeBIT 2004, CIENA Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), a global provider of innovative network solutions, announced that Arsys Internet S.L., an Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Spain, selected CIENA to supply a next-generation Broadband Remote Access Server (B-RAS) solution for its growing network. Through its strategic relationship with Laurel Networks, CIENA will provide Laurel's ST200(tm) Service Edge Router to resolve Arsys' challenge of economically scaling to meet its aggressive growth plans for the delivery of broadband services.

After engaging several B-RAS vendors in extensive technology evaluations, Arsys selected CIENA to provide the Laurel Networks ST200 platform to meet rapid subscriber growth and customer demand for higher connection speeds. With support for an industry-leading 128,000 subscriber sessions per chassis, the ST200 will enable Arsys to provide its customers high-bandwidth services while lowering the average cost per session.

"CIENA emerged as the most suitable vendor to provide the high subscriber session support required to overcome Arsys' primary obstacle of cost-effectively supporting a demand for high session counts and high bandwidth per session," said Rafael Citoler, General Director at Arsys Internet, S.L. "In addition to reducing our cost per connection, the ST200 also enables exceptional Quality of Service and carrier-class stability, so we can be confident that our guarantee to customers of service availability and bandwidth allocation is upheld. The combined solution, CIENA's local presence and Laurel's platform, creates a complete service portfolio for us to increase the efficiency and profitability of our network and cost-effectively attract new customers."
As Arsys continues to evolve its network for the future, the Laurel B-RAS solution allows for additional sophisticated broadband services for businesses, including VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Services) over broadband access, to be simply turned on via software. And, for Arsys' consumer customers, the ST200 includes the high bandwidth-per-subscriber, advanced QoS and integrated routing and switching required to offer triple play services including voice, video and data over a single connection.

"The ST200 B-RAS solution will help Arsys launch new high-value broadband services and facilitate the creation of integrated IP and Internet-based services for business customers, in addition to affording critical scalability features," said Nick Jeffery, senior vice president of worldwide sales at CIENA. "Demonstrating our flexibility and responsiveness as we diversify our portfolio, CIENA delivered the ST200 B-RAS solution to Arsys less than one month after design customization began, helping to quickly increase Arsys' position as a vanguard ISP in its area of operation."

Jeffery added: "This customer win is evidence of the successful partnership between CIENA and Laurel Networks. Integrating the Laurel platform into the CIENA portfolio is further enabling networks, like Arsys', to better capitalize on the profit potential of data and broadband services. By extending our reach into Layer 3 edge routing, Laurel's ST200 brings additional value to CIENA's comprehensive, next-generation networking solution, and reinforces our commitment to improve the economics of network ownership and provide value to our customers."

ST200 B-RAS Solution
The ST200 is dramatically more scalable than existing B-RAS devices, enabling broadband service providers to cost-efficiently evolve beyond basic Internet service to sophisticated services that can immediately begin impacting revenues such as IP VPNs and multimedia content delivery over broadband access networks. Only the ST200 B-RAS includes the high bandwidth-per-subscriber, advanced QoS, carrier-class availability and integrated routing and switching required for complete and reliable broadband service delivery. Unlike solutions that require service-specific line cards, ST200 B-RAS functionality is implemented in its ShadeTree(tm) System Software, enabling B-RAS support on any card installed on the ST200 platform with no additional hardware required.

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