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CIENA Wins Bid with GST Telecommunications

Expands DWDM Deployment into CLEC Market

Ciena Corporation (Nasdaq: CIEN) today announced that GST Telecommunications, Inc. (AMEX: GST) has chosen Ciena's MultiWave® 1600 dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) system for immediate deployment in its network. GST Telecommunications will install the MultiWave 1600 with Ciena's optical add/drop multiplexers in a long haul application in a portion of its network in California.

"GST selected Ciena because of its high quality products and unmatched experience in real-world, real-network DWDM applications" said Joseph A. Basile, Jr., president and chief operating officer of GST Telecommunications. "Deploying Ciena's DWDM equipment gives GST the flexibility to add network bandwidth when and where our customer demand requires - a critical ability for a growing CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) like GST."

GST, a facilities-based CLEC, currently offers a full range of integrated telecommunications services throughout the western United States and Hawaii. Due to increased customer demand on the Company's 500-mile California long-haul network, currently under construction, GST is adding Ciena's DWDM system to increase its bandwidth capacity. When complete, the network will run from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

"We selected Ciena because it met or exceeded all of our technical requirements," said Kevin Wright, chief technology officer of GST. "The initial installation will allow us to use eight wavelengths of OC-48. When demand warrants it, we will have the ability to easily upgrade to 16 wavelengths. Ciena's equipment also is compatible with various brands of fiber optic terminal equipment. Flexibility is important to us and is one of the chief criteria we use when evaluating any system," Wright added.

"The addition of GST to our growing customer base marks Ciena's entrance into the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier market," said Patrick Nettles, Ciena's president and chief executive officer. "It's also evidence of the spreading acceptance of DWDM as an efficient and economical way to increase network capacity, and demonstrates the fact that demand for bandwidth continues to spread across the public networks, with new customer opportunities popping up for Ciena in markets we might not have anticipated just a year ago."

GST's deployment of Ciena's MultiWave 1600 system is expected to be completed by April 1998.