RAMSEY, NJ -- ADVA Optical Networking today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire First Fibre, Ltd., a leading privately-held U.K.-based designer and manufacturer of carrier-class fiber access equipment and optical networking systems. The acquisition is in keeping with ADVA's strategy of moving aggressively to satisfy the needs of its customers by offering the industry's most complete and relevant solutions for metropolitan optical networking. First Fibre's solutions expand ADVA's presence - already established in Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) metro and enterprise networks - to the last mile of metro optical access networks

First Fibre (www.firstfiber.com), based in York, England, develops Network Equipment Building Standard- (NEBS-) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute- (ETSI-) compliant products that support all high-speed protocols ranging from 10Mbps to 2.5Gbps. The systems are available with AC or DC power and can be provisioned from a customer premise or central office through the in-band management feature. Leading North American and European carriers such as British Telecom and SBCAmeritech have deployed First Fibre's products, which include the CityLIGHT flagship line of modular, multi-protocol, carrier-class systems for fiber access and local area network (LAN) extension products; CampusLIGHT media converters, transceivers and repeaters, and CityLAN edge access products. First Fibre's team of 70 employees, including a high-quality group of application-specific integrated-circuit (ASIC) engineers, also will provide ADVA with additional expertise regarding support for multiple protocols in a transparent mode, network management and design solutions such as proprietary jitter management systems.

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