Philippines’ largest telecommunications provider enhances global points of presence with highly resilient multiservice networking capabilities

Ciena^® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, announced today that PLDT, a leading telecoms provider in the Philippines, has deployed Ciena’s 5410 Packet-Optical Reconfigurable Switch System (RSS) and OneConnect Intelligent Control Plane software across its global network footprint. With these Ciena platforms, both critical components of the company’s OPⁿ architecture, PLDT will create a global mesh network that interconnects points of presence worldwide into a highly resilient, intelligent mesh switching network to provide greater network performance, efficiency and resiliency to meet stringent Service Level Agreement (SLA) requirements.

“As the largest telecommunications provider in the Philippines and a rapidly growing international carrier, it is critical that our infrastructure is highly reliable and capable of delivering robust broadband service and applications,” said Napoleon L. Nazareno, President and CEO, PLDT. “With the implementation of Ciena’s intelligent optical mesh network solutions across our international network, we are able to give our enterprise and wholesale customers a variety of low-latency, high-capacity services with the utmost assurance, putting us on par with large global carriers,” he adds.

“With our packet-optical technology and intelligent optical control plane software, PLDT will be able to offer its customers high-availability, high-capacity SONET/SDH, OTN and Ethernet dedicated services over a global intelligent mesh network. Additionally, our control plane software allows service providers like PLDT to fine tune their networks to be more intelligent and to quickly respond to changing network demands – without manual intervention,” said Anthony McLachlan, vice president and general manager, Asia Pacific, Ciena.

To support PLDT’s network modernization effort, Ciena’s 5410 RSS will link PLDT’s global points of presence to provide efficient aggregation, grooming and intelligent switching of SONET/SDH, OTN and Ethernet services with flexible tiered service-levels and differentiated service offerings. Customer traffic traversing PLDT’s existing and future submarine capacity network will be carried over a highly resilient mesh network design.

Ciena’s OneConnect technology will allow PLDT to quickly detect faults and automatically switch data traffic to backup routes as needed in the event of a network outage. This allows PLDT’s business customers to minimize the impact of breakages due to cable cuts, earthquakes and network outages by staying connected to their worldwide offices without any connectivity disruption, thus providing PLDT a competitive edge in the enterprise services landscape.

Additionally, PLDT will leverage Ciena’s OneControl Unified Management System, which provides comprehensive unified management, visualization and control of the network. Ciena is also providing a range of professional services for this deployment via Ciena’s Specialist Services portfolio, including installation, commissioning and project management.

In July 2012, PLDT started to deploy Ciena’s industry-leading 6500 Packet-Optical Platform with WaveLogic coherent optical technology, integrated ROADM, and OTN switching across its backbone Domestic Fiber Optic Network (DFON) to deliver the country’s first network with 40G, 100G and OTN switching capabilities. The 5410 RSS upgrade leverages Ciena's innovative GeoMesh solutions, which allows PLDT to efficiently connect its submarine and terrestrial networks into a single seamless network that is simpler, more cost-effective and forecast-tolerant as market conditions continue to change. PLDT’s new mesh network services are now commercially available and premium clients are opting to migrate to the new highly resilient intelligent optical mesh network.

About PLDTPhilippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) is the leading telecommunications provider in the Philippines. Through its principal business segments – fixed line, wireless, and others – PLDT offers the largest and most diversified range of telecommunications services across the Philippines’ most extensive fiber optic backbone and fixed line, wireless, broadband, and satellite networks.

PLDT is listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE:TEL) and its American Depositary Shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:PHI). PLDT has one of the largest market capitalizations among Philippine-listed companies. For more information, visit www.pldt.com.ph.

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 perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with OPⁿ, its approach for building open next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, other announcements and, from time to time, exclusively post material information as with the other disclosure channels that we use.

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 June 12, 2013. 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.