LONDON -- Ciena Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced its strategy for the 3G market in Europe to help mobile operators overcome capacity, efficiency and operational expenditure challenges when deploying 3G Radio Access Networks (RANs). With market leading network aggregation and transmission platforms (the DN and CN series products), Ciena uniquely enables mobile operators to implement the most economical, reliable and future-ready access networks.

The evolution of 3G is placing considerable strain on the operational expenditure of mobile operators. The main challenge today and onwards is for operators to economically create increased capacity without compromising existing voice and new data-oriented revenue streams. This capacity demand is being driven by increased introduction of sophisticated new bandwidth-hungry services being offered to customers, thus resulting in operational challenges in the RAN.

Due to the initial rate of adoption of 3G, many mobile operators chose to take a leased-line or managed services approach to aggregation and transmission when building their RAN infrastructure. However, market expectation is for network coverage that equals or exceeds 2G coverage with more extensive service deployment. This expectation, coupled with increased consumer and business uptake of 3G services, means that mobile operators are considering taking more ownership and control of the RAN to ensure ongoing competitiveness. In this scenario, Ciena enables the creation of a RAN that is able to accommodate significantly higher bandwidth and handle the support of all types of backhaul traffic, including TDM, ATM, Ethernet and IP/MPLS, thereby achieving the most cost-effective competitive position.

The 3G evolution enables mobile operators to penetrate new markets such as corporate data and entertainment, and to be successful in this environment they must compete with traditional landline carriers and services. Therefore, mobile operators must take advantage of low-cost infrastructure solutions wherever possible.

Ciena works with 3G operators who decide either to insource their RAN or to continue their leased-line arrangements with fixed operators. In either case, Ciena's solutions significantly improve the network efficiencies and cost in the 3G RAN. Ultimately, insourcing will enable greater control over the costs of backhaul and the quality of the new mobile subscriber services. Whichever approach taken, Ciena helps 3G operators to flexibly and reliably meet their network aggregation and transmission needs.

By working with Ciena in this manner, 3G operators may expect to achieve significant margin improvements and overall improvement in their return on investment. Ciena enables mobile operators to increase margins by supporting long term ARPU growth based on new services such as media rich applications, VPN access and gaming. These applications will drive significant bandwidth demand in the RAN, which needs to be supported cost effectively. Operators that choose the insource route will also benefit from increased management and control by gaining direct control of the transport from the base station interface to the switching centre interface. Some operating networks could also benefit from a significant increase in service availability through use of Ciena's advanced technology.

Gary Smith, CEO and president at Ciena, said: "Ciena is one of the world's leaders in transmission and aggregation equipment to many large telecoms carriers around the globe. The decision to target the 3G market is a natural evolution for us, as it is an extension of our specialisation in fixed networks. Regardless of the choice to insource or outsource, Ciena has a significant part to play by bringing to the market a solution that is ideally suited to this emerging need. We look forward to expanding our involvement with 3G operators to help provide significant cost savings as they take advantage of new data services and reap the benefits from their 3G license investment."

Ciena Corp.