Contact Information: For media and analysts, contact: Media in Asia & at Submarine Networks World: Chew Peng Healey Tel. +65 97311948 chealey@infinera.com Other Media: Jeff Ferry Tel. (408) 572-5213 jferry@infinera.com Investors: Bob Blair Tel. (408) 716-4879 bblair@infinera.com
Infinera Dives Into Submarine Market With Photonic Integration-Based Systems
Global Crossing Deploys New Solution for Capacity and Speed
| Source: Infinera
SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - September 1, 2009) - Infinera (NASDAQ : INFN ) is launching a new
submarine solution to bring the benefits of photonic integration to the
world of undersea networks. The new Infinera submarine solution is designed
to bring enhanced capacity, new services, and Infinera's rapid speed of
deployment to the world of subsea networks. The Infinera submarine
solution, which is designed to be deployed at land-based terminals of
submarine networks, is already shipping to Infinera customers and is
carrying live traffic today for Global Crossing.
Carriers worldwide are seeing increasing bandwidth demand on submarine
networks, driven by growing pervasiveness of the Internet and network usage
in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.
Many of those networks are reaching the limits of their current capacity.
The Infinera submarine solution offers submarine network operators a highly
cost-effective way to protect their investment in their subsea
infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network and taking
advantage of other features of the Infinera Digital Optical Networks
architecture. The Infinera submarine solution enables carriers to deliver
additional capacity, typically including a doubling of the number of
wavelengths on their subsea networks, while enjoying the speed of
deployment, ease of operation, and flexibility of the Infinera platform.
With the ability to use one optical platform for their subsea networks and
their terrestrial networks, we believe network operators can deploy an
end-to-end solution with significant savings in capital and operating cost
and simplified operation.
The new Infinera submarine solution is based on several technical
breakthroughs. Infinera's large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs)
have been enhanced with the addition of semiconductor optical amplifiers
(SOAs) to provide trans-oceanic optical reach for the Infinera submarine
solution. The enhanced PICs are implemented in the new Infinera Submarine
Line Module (SLM), which provides 100 Gigabits/second (Gb/s) of PIC-based
DWDM capacity on every line card. With up to 16 SLM modules multiplexed
onto a single fiber, the Infinera submarine solution can provide up to 160
wavelengths on existing submarine optical networks. In addition, the
Infinera solution incorporates innovative new technology intended to
provide significant cost and space savings as compared to traditional DWDM
submarine networks.
Pan-American Deployment with Global Crossing
The Infinera submarine solution has already been deployed by global
carriers including Global Crossing, for a total of almost 50,000 subsea
route-kilometers. Infinera won these large contracts despite intense
competition from a number of international vendors of submarine networking
systems.
Global Crossing has deployed the Infinera submarine solution on its
Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC) and its South American Crossing (SAC) networks,
for a total of 26,000 route-kilometers. Global Crossing chose Infinera to
achieve increased capacity on its submarine routes without the need to
deploy a completely new subsea network. Global Crossing will benefit from
Infinera's speed of deployment and software automation, which is designed
to make provisioning quicker and easier. Augmentations to the Infinera
network can be provided in days or weeks instead of as much as six to
twelve months on traditional submarine networks. Global Crossing first
deployed an Infinera terrestrial network in 2006 and knows how to take full
benefit of Infinera's Digital Optical Networks architecture.
"We are pleased with our new Infinera subsea network. It extends the reach
of our existing highly reliable terrestrial digital optical architecture
over Global Crossing subsea facilities, enabling single key stroke optical
network provisioning end to end to on-net cities between continents. The
world just got a little smaller," said Jim Watts, VP of Transport
Engineering of Global Crossing.
Billion-Dollar Market
The submarine networking market has enjoyed strong growth in recent years,
as growing trans-continental Internet traffic has risen sharply, propelled
by increasing adoption of Internet-capable mobile phones, high-speed
Internet connections to homes and businesses, and growing prosperity in
underdeveloped markets, where hundreds of millions of people have begun
using Internet technology. According to data from independent analysts
Ovum, the submarine networking market reached $858 million in 2008, up 56%
from the year earlier. This year, Ovum expects the market to rise 23% to
$1.06 billion, followed by a 20% increase in 2010 to $1.27 billion. By
contrast, the total optical networking market is expected by Ovum to
decline 5.5% this year to $15.4 billion and rise 5% next year.
"Subsea cable operators are struggling to increase capacity to keep up with
skyrocketing demand. Installing a new cable plant is both time consuming
and expensive, therefore terminal upgrades are becoming very attractive,"
said Ron Kline Research Director, Optical Networks at Ovum. "Infinera has
done a good job adapting its PIC technology for applicability in subsea
networks. Operators are looking for more channels and higher rates per
channel (40G and ultimately 100G) through terminal only upgrades so they
can postpone the time and expense of putting in new subsea systems.
Increasing density is important and integrating SLTE and terrestrial
systems provide an attractive solution for operators looking to simplify
operations and reduce costs."
"The submarine market represents the latest segment to adopt Infinera as
its vendor of choice, continuing Infinera's momentum in penetrating new
applications within the optical transport market. Infinera's submarine
solution, with the Infinera digital architecture based on photonic
integration, offers benefits that other competitors, with their me-too
approaches, simply cannot deliver," said Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh.
"Submarine network operators are facing the challenge of bandwidth demand
expanding much faster than revenue, and the Infinera submarine solution
will help them address technical and economic challenges, while getting the
most out of their infrastructure."
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 The Infinera submarine solution offers submarine network
operators a highly cost-effective way to protect their investment in their
subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network and taking
advantage of other features of the Infinera Digital Optical Networks
architecture; that network operators can deploy an end-to-end solution with
significant savings in capital and operating cost and simplified operation;
that the Infinera DCM3, provides significant cost and space savings that
will benefit from Infinera's speed of deployment and software automation,
and make provisioning quicker and easier; and that the Infinera submarine
solution offers benefits that other competitors cannot deliver. 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.