May 19, 2004 Linthicum, MD -- The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has granted RUS Acceptance to CIENA Corp.'s ONLINE Edge multiservice platform and its DN 7000 series of multiservice edge switching solutions, which includes the DN 7000, DN 7050, DN 7100 and DN 7200 products.
RUS Acceptance for ONLINE Edge and the DN 7000 series augments previously announced RUS Acceptance for CIENA's ONLINE Metro and MetroDirector K2 multiservice platforms, as well as its CN 1000 broadband loop carrier (BLC). Together, these platforms form an end-to-end product portfolio for the delivery of advanced voice, video, and data services on a converged broadband network.
With the approval of these products, CIENA offers a full suite of optical, data, and access products that are available to independent operating companies (IOCs) for purchase using RUS program funding. RUS Acceptance indicates that these products meet strict requirements for field performance, compliance to standards, and U.S. manufacturing.
"In addition to bringing broadband services and Internet access to rural areas of the country, RUS Acceptance for our service-delivery solutions also helps open new market opportunities for CIENA and our reseller partners," asserts Francois Locoh-Donou, CIENA's vice president of marketing. "With these RUS-approved solutions, CIENA is in an even stronger position to help rural network operators and utilities increase the profitability of their broadband offerings."
CIENA's DN 7000 series multiservice edge switching platform enables service providers to deliver customized services based on customer demand and service area density at lower price points than any product on the market today. On a single platform, the 7000 series delivers native Frame Relay, ATM, Ethernet, Circuit Emulation Services (CES), and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) functionality. The DN 7000 series allows service providers to protect and expand their current Layer 2 investments and migrate their existing and new services to IP/MPLS-based converged backbones.
CIENA's ONLINE Edge multiservice platform delivers service transparency through intelligent coarse WDM (CWDM) technology combined with service aggregation. The compact and modular ONLINE Edge is designed for enterprises and service providers who require a mix of traditional TDM and a range of carrier-class, high-bandwidth native data and storage services over a single optical infrastructure.