CIENA APPOINTS NEW HEAD OF CHINA OPERATIONS

Appointment reaffirms CIENA’s long-term commitment to Mainland China

HONG KONG — 06/24/2003 Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), a leading provider of global network solutions, today announced the appointment of Dr. Jianhui Zhou to the position of Vice President and General Manager, China. Dr. Zhou was previously Ciena’s vice president of product management, responsible for managing the Company’s portfolio of metro products.

Gary Smith, president and chief executive officer of Ciena, said: “We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Zhou to the post of general manager of China operations. China is the most vibrant and robust telecom market in the world today, and also potentially the most competitive. Dr. Zhou’s appointment is a reaffirmation of our commitment to mainland China and to meeting the needs of Chinese telecom operators.”

Dr. Zhou’s appointment is an indication of Ciena’s steady progress in the mainland China market, following the opening of a representative office in Beijing in December 2002. Dr. Zhou will be responsible for Ciena’s distributor relationships and business development programs, and will also assume overall responsibility for the sales and marketing of Ciena’s network solutions to key Chinese telecom operators.

Dr. Zhou has held senior R&D management positions at Lucent Technologies, where he led the company’s efforts in developing DWDM system products, and received the prestigious Bell Labs President’s Gold Award. He is a graduate of China’s prestigious Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology, and several patents in the area of optical communications.