CORNING, N.Y. -- Corning Incorporated (NYSE:GLW - News), a world-leading supplier of optical fiber, today announced the global conversion of its standard single-mode fiber product portfolio to Corning® SMF-28e® optical fiber, the industry's most widely demanded low water peak optical fiber. The company also announced significant advancements in both optical and geometry specifications for SMF-28e fiber. With this move, Corning once again reinforces its commitment to quality and to meeting customer requirements with the industry's most comprehensive specifications for full-spectrum single-mode fiber.

Corning has now established SMF-28e fiber as the successor product to SMF-28® optical fiber. SMF-28e fiber, an ITU-T G.652.C- and D-compliant fiber provides both tighter specifications and full-spectrum capability required by today's carriers, while carrying forward all of the advanced attributes that customers have come to expect from the various products included in the Corning SMF-28 fiber family. First introduced and accepted by customers in 2001, SMF-28e fiber is compliant to all major industry standards and is compatible and fully inter-operable with legacy single-mode networks.

Enhanced specifications for SMF-28e fiber in the areas of attenuation, dispersion and cladding non-circularity are being introduced this week at NFOEC 2003 in Orlando, Florida. Corning has lowered the SMF-28e fiber attenuation specification by up to 9 percent for three major operating windows, allowing greater application design flexibility. Further, Corning has improved both the specified dispersion limits and the maximum zero-dispersion slope values, providing operators with added network planning reliability across multiple transmission bands in today's emerging applications. Finally, SMF-28e fiber now has more stringent geometry specifications for cladding non-circularity, delivering even greater ease of installation and handleability through improved fiber splicing and connectorization performance.

"Corning's customers praise SMF-28e fiber for its best-in-class specifications that provide them benefits in their networks today and give them confidence for long-term performance and reliability in future applications." said Bob Brown, senior vice president and general manager, Corning Optical Fiber. "With millions of kilometers of SMF-28e fiber sold this year, the industry has clearly embraced Corning's proven, comprehensive offering of specifications, performance and value-adding services."

All Corning SMF-28e optical fiber is now being manufactured to these enhanced specifications. For cabled fiber availability, network operators may contact their preferred supplier of cabled Corning Optical Fiber.

Corning Cable Systems (CCS)