ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Avanex Corp. (NASDAQ:AVNX), Mitsubishi Electric Corp. and Opnext Inc., today announced the formation of a Multi-Source Agreement (MSA) to establish compatible sources of 10Gbit/s XFP-E (extended size) transceivers for high-performance applications in 10Gbit/s optical transmission systems. The announcement was made at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference & Exposition and the National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference 2006 (OFC/NFOEC).

The members will establish internationally compatible sources of 10Gbit/s XFP-E transceivers that are designed to achieve high-performance applications of 10Gbit/s transmission systems with electrical and optical compatibility with XFP standard transceivers. As an extension of standard XFP MSA 4.0 compliant, it provides convenient and flexible optical interfaces for ultra-long-haul DWDM applications as well as back compatibility with SONET/SDH, 10GbE and 10G Fiber Channel XFP transceivers operating from 9.95Gbit/s up to 11.09Gbit/s. The new XFP-E meets the applicable ITU-T G.691, ITU-T G.709, Telcordia GR-253 and XFP MSA standards.

An XFI electrical interface is provided along with a two wire serial I2C interface for digital diagnostics.

This MSA intends to establish the compatible XFP-E Transceivers as defined below:

MSA is now finalizing the XFP-E specifications and samples will be available in 2006.

The XFP-E will be a natural extension and backward compatible to XFP technology to:

Avanex Corp. (Nasdaq: AVNX)

Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Tokyo: 6503)

Opnext Inc. (Nasdaq: OPXT)