MURRAY HILL, N.J. -- Lucent Technologies (NYSE: LU) today announced athree-year agreement with Verizon to expand the capacity of Verizon'sregional inter-office core network throughout the United States. Verizon has named Lucent its exclusive provider for future deployments of ring Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology.Lucent will provide Verizon with its Metropolis® Enhanced Optical Networking(EON), a DWDM metro optical system designed to eliminate bottlenecks inmetropolitan networks caused by increasing data traffic needs of itscustomers. This ring-based optical networking solution allows Verizon toexpand the bandwidth of its existing network and cost effectively delivernew revenue-generating, high-speed services such as gigabit ethernet andinteroperable storage solutions to its customers.Verizon's network deployment will begin in Philadelphia later this spring,as a first office application with future rollouts targeted at large datamarket areas throughout the United States."We are pleased that Verizon is using our Metropolis® metro solutionexclusively to offer a whole new world of next-generation services to itscustomers," said Janet Davidson, president, Integrated Network SolutionsGroup. "Metropolis® is part of Lucent's next-generation architecture toprovide leading-edge products to the entire network from the core to theedge."Lucent Technologies Inc.Verizon Communications Inc.