PARIS and LINTHICUM, Md. -- The South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SEA-ME-WE 4) co-owners have selected Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) andCiena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN) for their network expansion project. Alcatel-Lucent was selected for an upgrade to 40G (Gigabit per second) transmission of all the submarine segments. Ciena was selected to supply optical switching equipment for all 16 cable landing sites as well as for 100G transport for an upgrade of the terrestrial link connecting Alexandria to Suez in Egypt.

The deployment will commence in the first quarter of 2011, and will provide substantial capacity increase to the existing cable system (ultimate capacity of 2.4 Terabit per second per fiber pair), which supports the delivery of high-speed internet and broadband services along the approximately 20,000 km route connecting Europe to the Middle East and South East Asia.

Alcatel-Lucent will deploy its 1620 Light Manager upgraded to 40G with coherent technology, and also upgrade part of the already installed 1678 Metro Core Connect on the terrestrial SDH side. Ciena will deploy its multi-terabit ActivFlex 5430 Reconfigurable Switching System at cable landing stations and ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, equipped with coherent 100G optics, for the upgrade to 100G of the terrestrial link in Egypt and part of the terrestrial SDH.

Ciena Corp. (NYSE: CIEN)

Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU)