Infinera Dives Into Submarine Market With Photonic Integration-Based Systems

Global Crossing Deploys New Solution for Capacity and Speed
SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - 09/02/09) - Infinera (NASDAQ:INFN - News) is launching a new submarine solution to bring the benefits of photonic integration to the world of undersea networks. The new Infinera submarine solution is designed to bring enhanced capacity, new services, and Infinera's rapid speed of deployment to the world of subsea networks. The Infinera submarine solution, which is designed to be deployed at land-based terminals of submarine networks, is already shipping to Infinera customers and is carrying live traffic today for Global Crossing.
Carriers worldwide are seeing increasing bandwidth demand on submarine networks, driven by growing pervasiveness of the Internet and network usage in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. Many of those networks are reaching the limits of their current capacity. The Infinera submarine solution offers submarine network operators a highly cost-effective way to protect their investment in their subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network and taking advantage of other features of the Infinera Digital Optical Networks architecture. The Infinera submarine solution enables carriers to deliver additional capacity, typically including a doubling of the number of wavelengths on their subsea networks, while enjoying the speed of deployment, ease of operation, and flexibility of the Infinera platform. With the ability to use one optical platform for their subsea networks and their terrestrial networks, we believe network operators can deploy an end-to-end solution with significant savings in capital and operating cost and simplified operation.
The new Infinera submarine solution is based on several technical breakthroughs. Infinera's large-scale photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have been enhanced with the addition of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) to provide trans-oceanic optical reach for the Infinera submarine solution. The enhanced PICs are implemented in the new Infinera Submarine Line Module (SLM), which provides 100 Gigabits/second (Gb/s) of PIC-based DWDM capacity on every line card. With up to 16 SLM modules multiplexed onto a single fiber, the Infinera submarine solution can provide up to 160 wavelengths on existing submarine optical networks. In addition, the Infinera solution incorporates innovative new technology intended to provide significant cost and space savings as compared to traditional DWDM submarine networks.
Pan-American Deployment with Global Crossing
The Infinera submarine solution has already been deployed by global carriers including Global Crossing, for a total of almost 50,000 subsea route-kilometers. Infinera won these large contracts despite intense competition from a number of international vendors of submarine networking systems.
Global Crossing has deployed the Infinera submarine solution on its Mid-Atlantic Crossing (MAC) and its South American Crossing (SAC) networks, for a total of 26,000 route-kilometers. Global Crossing chose Infinera to achieve increased capacity on its submarine routes without the need to deploy a completely new subsea network. Global Crossing will benefit from Infinera's speed of deployment and software automation, which is designed to make provisioning quicker and easier. Augmentations to the Infinera network can be provided in days or weeks instead of as much as six to twelve months on traditional submarine networks. Global Crossing first deployed an Infinera terrestrial network in 2006 and knows how to take full benefit of Infinera's Digital Optical Networks architecture.
"We are pleased with our new Infinera subsea network. It extends the reach of our existing highly reliable terrestrial digital optical architecture over Global Crossing subsea facilities, enabling single key stroke optical network provisioning end to end to on-net cities between continents. The world just got a little smaller," said Jim Watts, VP of Transport Engineering of Global Crossing.
Billion-Dollar Market
The submarine networking market has enjoyed strong growth in recent years, as growing trans-continental Internet traffic has risen sharply, propelled by increasing adoption of Internet-capable mobile phones, high-speed Internet connections to homes and businesses, and growing prosperity in underdeveloped markets, where hundreds of millions of people have begun using Internet technology. According to data from independent analysts Ovum, the submarine networking market reached $858 million in 2008, up 56% from the year earlier. This year, Ovum expects the market to rise 23% to $1.06 billion, followed by a 20% increase in 2010 to $1.27 billion. By contrast, the total optical networking market is expected by Ovum to decline 5.5% this year to $15.4 billion and rise 5% next year.
"Subsea cable operators are struggling to increase capacity to keep up with skyrocketing demand. Installing a new cable plant is both time consuming and expensive, therefore terminal upgrades are becoming very attractive," said Ron Kline Research Director, Optical Networks at Ovum. "Infinera has done a good job adapting its PIC technology for applicability in subsea networks. Operators are looking for more channels and higher rates per channel (40G and ultimately 100G) through terminal only upgrades so they can postpone the time and expense of putting in new subsea systems. Increasing density is important and integrating SLTE and terrestrial systems provide an attractive solution for operators looking to simplify operations and reduce costs."
"The submarine market represents the latest segment to adopt Infinera as its vendor of choice, continuing Infinera's momentum in penetrating new applications within the optical transport market. Infinera's submarine solution, with the Infinera digital architecture based on photonic integration, offers benefits that other competitors, with their me-too approaches, simply cannot deliver," said Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh. "Submarine network operators are facing the challenge of bandwidth demand expanding much faster than revenue, and the Infinera submarine solution will help them address technical and economic challenges, while getting the most out of their infrastructure."
About Infinera
Infinera provides Digital Optical Networking systems to telecommunications carriers worldwide. Infinera's systems are unique in their use of a breakthrough semiconductor technology: the photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Infinera's systems and PIC technology are designed to provide customers with simpler and more flexible engineering and operations, faster time-to-service, and the ability to rapidly deliver differentiated services without reengineering their optical infrastructure. For more information, please visit http://www.infinera.com/
This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to Infinera as of the date hereof; and actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Infinera's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including that The Infinera submarine solution offers submarine network operators a highly cost-effective way to protect their investment in their subsea infrastructure while adding new capacity to the network and taking advantage of other features of the Infinera Digital Optical Networks architecture; that network operators can deploy an end-to-end solution with significant savings in capital and operating cost and simplified operation; that the Infinera DCM3, provides significant cost and space savings that will benefit from Infinera's speed of deployment and software automation, and make provisioning quicker and easier; and that the Infinera submarine solution offers benefits that other competitors cannot deliver. Such forward-looking statements can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipated," "believed," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements include aggressive business tactics by our competitors, our dependence on a single product, our ability to protect our intellectual property, claims by others that we infringe their intellectual property, our manufacturing process is very complex, product performance problems we may encounter, our dependence on sole or limited source suppliers, our ability to respond to rapid technological changes, our ability to maintain effective internal controls, the ability of our contract manufacturers to perform as we expect, a new technology being developed that replaces the PIC as the dominant technology in optical networks, general political, economic and market conditions and events, including war, conflict or acts of terrorism; and other risks that may impact Infinera's business are set forth in our annual report Form 10-K, which was filed with the SEC on February 17, 2009, as well as subsequent reports filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. These statements are based on information available to us as of the date hereof and we disclaim any obligation to update the forward-looking statements included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Contact:
For media and analysts, contact:
Media in Asia & at Submarine Networks World:
Chew Peng Healey
Tel. +65 97311948
chealey@infinera.com
Other Media:
Jeff Ferry
Tel. (408) 572-5213
jferry@infinera.com
Investors:
Bob Blair
Tel. (408) 716-487
9bblair@infinera.com