LightRiver, Lucent Team on Utilities

ORLANDO, Fla. -- LightRiver Technologies, Inc. (Booth #500) today announced at the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (NFOEC) three new installations of Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) (Booth #1016) optical networking systems at several large utility companies across the United States. LightRiver, a key accredited Lucent Business Partner, and its affiliate LightSpeed Technologies, have delivered targeted data and optical networking solutions to Pacific Gas & Electric, Nevada Power and a major Maryland power producer.

"Utility companies need large amounts of bandwidth and must have extremely reliable and fail-proof data transport networks for their operational needs, and optical networking solutions are proving to be a critical component piece of utility companies' overall infrastructure," said Glenn Johansen, LightRiver Technologies' founder and CEO. "We have a thorough understanding of our customer needs, and they rely on our expertise and intimate product knowledge to design and deliver cost-effective, highly robust solutions for critical applications like substation automation."

PG&E and Nevada Power Expand Substation Automation Projects

LightRiver Technologies, armed with Lucent's metro optical products, is working with a number of utility companies who are upgrading their communications equipment as part of an industry-wide initiative known as Substation Automation. As a part of this, utility companies have been modernizing their equipment and processes to improve service reliability, offer new services to their internal customers, and reduce operational and maintenance costs. Optical networking solutions deliver tremendous bandwidth, redundancy, and "self-healing" qualities in addition to the "carrier-grade" reliability utilities need to ensure cost-effective, secure, and reliable service.

San Francisco, Calif.-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is one of the largest combination natural gas and electric utilities in the United States. The company is working with LightRiver to continue its substation automation projects by deploying Lucent Technologies DDM-2000 and WaveStar(R) TDM2.5G SONET multiplexers at their major substations. PG&E uses these optical networking products to transport Ethernet, DS1, DS3 and OC-3 signals between their substations and data centers.

"The Lucent DDM-2000 and WaveStar equipment allows PG&E to connect voice and data services to their substations with the "always available" reliability of SONET," said Brian Haux, senior vice president of Strategic Accounts at LightRiver. "Working with PG&E, LightRiver has helped design and deploy a network that will provide the tremendous bandwidth and reliability that is critical to PG&E for cost effective operations now and into the future."

LightRiver Technologies also assisted PG&E in solving a high loss fiber path problem with the use of Lucent's Metropolis(R) Wavelength Extension Solution. The solution was comprised of optical splitters and optical amplifiers that allowed two OC-48 signals to be transported over a single fiber. LightRiver proposed a splitter-combiner in conjunction with a Lucent optical amplifier, providing PG&E with an economical solution that allows them to avoid using a second fiber pair.

Nevada Power, headquartered in Las Vegas, Nev. continues to expand its substation network using Lucent Technologies' Metropolis(R) DMX product family. The Metropolis(R) DMX and Metropolis(R) DMXpress are substation- hardened and provide traditional DS1 and optical services as well as Ethernet services for Nevada Power's communications network. Nevada Power has contracted with LightRiver for design, testing, deployment, service, and support.

"We continue to rely on LightRiver to help help us upgrade our substation networks to provide traditional services such as DS1 and DS3 transport in addition to new services supported by Ethernet," said Adam Godorov, Telecommunications Engineer from Nevada Power.

Major Maryland Utility Expands Data and Telecommunications Services with New Optical Network

In order to efficiently route networking traffic between their data center and other critical business centers, the utility turned to LightSpeed Technologies, LightRiver's East Coast sales partner, to help design, build, and install a four node optical network using Lucent Technologies' Metropolis(R) DMX Access Multiplexer for delivery of Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet. The first project was so effective that a fifth node was recently added, and another four-node ring was recently completed.

The Metropolis(R) DMX family, now deployed by more than 70 service providers, includes the DMX Access Multiplexer for central office and large enterprise applications, the DMXpress for customer premises applications, and DMXtend for loop and enterprise access applications. All provide compatible next-generation SONET functionality and serve as integrated Ethernet over SONET metro platforms. The DDM-2000 is Lucent's embedded SONET multiplexing product. The Metropolis(R) Wavelength Extension Solution provides low-cost solutions for fiber exhaust, TDM span extension, wavelength access and translation, and SAN transport. The WaveStar(R) TDM 2.5G is a multi-service self-healing SONET transport network product that enables service providers to deliver optical services at rates of up to 10 gigabits per second per wavelength. For more information: http://www.lucent.com/solutions/metro_optical.html.

LightRiver Technologies Inc.

Lucent Technologies Inc.