Commitment to excellence over the past year has earned Ciena® Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN), recognition as an outstanding supplier to AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), one of the world’s leading data, voice, wireless and Internet services providers.

“We are proud of our long-standing tradition of providing unparalleled products and services to our business and residential customers,” said Maureen Merkle, President, AT&T Procurement. “We’re successful on that front in large part thanks to supplier partners like Ciena that consistently go above and beyond the call of duty.”

Ciena received one of 49 supplier recognition awards for its work in helping AT&T deliver outstanding service to its customers during the past year. Ciena was recognized for its contributions in the Creative Cost-Management Solutions category.

“This recognition is a testament to Ciena’s commitment to provide our customers with quality solutions that exceed performance objectives and deliver maximum network value,” said Mike Aquino, Ciena’s senior vice president, Worldwide Sales.

As part of its annual supplier recognition program, AT&T took out a half-page ad in the June 7, 2006, edition of The Wall Street Journal to publicly thank the selected companies.

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 compete. With focused innovation, Ciena brings together the reliability and capacity of optical networking with the flexibility and economics of Ethernet, unified by a software suite 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/.