Infinera's Dave Welch to Keynote at Photonics in Communications Conference

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - December 1, 2009) - Infinera (NASDAQ: INFN) co-founder and chief marketing and strategy officer Dr. Dave Welch will deliver a keynote address at today's Photonics in Communications conference explaining the key role photonic integration will play in enabling Internet capacity to grow in the coming years to accommodate booming bandwidth demand, which is expected to be driven by a wide variety of applications and end-users.

The Photonics in Communications conference, hosted by the Optoelectronic Industry Development Association (OIDA), takes place today and tomorrow, Dec. 1-2, in Santa Clara, California. It brings together leading optical technology companies, telecom companies, and Internet application providers to assess and discuss the challenges and opportunities facing optical communications.

Speakers at this year's conference include representatives of AT&T, Facebook, Google, Intel, NYSE Euronext, Sun Microsystems, and Verizon.

The forces driving growth in bandwidth demand include the growing popularity of social networking websites incorporating video and other high-bandwidth applications, the growth of cloud computing and the need to connect ever-larger data centers to each other and to the cloud; and the growing demand from the financial community for large-bandwidth low-latency networks to support high-volume trading of financial instruments. In his keynote address, Dr. Welch will discuss challenges of scale, efficiency, and speed as the optical network transitions to 40 Gigabit/second (Gb/s) and 100 Gb/s wavelengths, and how the industry's efforts in photonic integration provide the solution to these crucial challenges.

By pioneering large-scale photonic integration, Infinera began shipping optical systems with 100 Gb/s of bandwidth capacity on a single pair of chips in 2004, and achieved more than $1 billion in cumulative shipments of the Infinera DTN optical system in Q3 of 2009. Last month at the SC09 conference Infinera demonstrated a preproduction 100 Gigabit Ethernet module, expected to be a key technology for large-scale data center connectivity. Infinera believes that the progress of photonic integration technology is likely to enable it to double the bandwidth capacity of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) every three years, for many years to come.

"Many other technological developments now being discussed in the optical communications industry involve a one-time improvement in bandwidth performance, often with a significant price to pay in terms of cost increases or other penalties." commented Dr. Welch. "Photonic integration is the only technology I know of that can deliver an increase in capacity while simultaneously enabling improvements in other important parameters like cost, reliability, or power consumption."

The OIDA Photonics in Communication Forum will take place on December 1-2 at the Techmart in Santa Clara, California. Dave Welch will be speaking on Tuesday, December 1st from 2:10 - 2:40 pm. Further information is available at http://www.oida.org/events/forum09.

About Infinera

Infinera provides Digital Optical Networking systems to telecommunications carriers worldwide. Infinera's systems are unique in their use of a breakthrough semiconductor technology: the photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Infinera's systems and PIC technology are designed to provide customers with simpler and more flexible engineering and operations, faster time-to-service, and the ability to rapidly deliver differentiated services without reengineering their optical infrastructure. For more information, please visit http://www.infinera.com/.

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 Infinera as of the date hereof; and actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Infinera's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including that photonic integration is the only technology that can deliver increasing bandwidth capacity while simultaneously delivering reductions in cost per bit, power consumption per bit and space consumption; that 100 Gigabit Ethernet module is expected to be a key technology for large-scale data center connectivity; and that the progress of photonic integration technology is likely to enable it to double the bandwidth capacity of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) every three years, for many years to come; Such forward-looking statements can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipated," "believed," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include aggressive business tactics by our competitors, our dependence on a single product, our ability to protect our intellectual property, claims by others that we infringe their intellectual property, our manufacturing process is very complex, product performance problems we may encounter, our dependence on sole or limited source suppliers, our ability to respond to rapid technological changes, our ability to maintain effective internal controls, the ability of our contract manufacturers to perform as we expect, a new technology being developed that replaces the PIC as the dominant technology in optical networks, general political, economic and market conditions and events, including war, conflict or acts of terrorism; and other risks that may impact Infinera's business are set forth in our annual report Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC on February 17, 2009, as well as subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date hereof and we disclaim any obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact Information: For media and analysts: Media: Jeff Ferry Tel. (408) 572-5213 jferry@infinera.com Investors: Bob Blair Tel. (408) 716-4879 bblair@infinera.com