American Fiber Systems Selects Ciena for Network Upgrades in Atlanta

AFS expands network with Ciena platform to provide additional transport and Internet access services
ROCHESTER, N.Y. and LINTHICUM, Md. —
Privately held American Fiber Systems (AFS), an optical fiber network provider to carriers and large enterprises, and Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced a new partnership to deploy Ciena’s advanced, multiservice metro/regional WDM platform across multiple AFS networks in Atlanta, Alpharetta and Marietta. AFS has earned a highly regarded reputation in Atlanta and nine other markets for providing reliable, easy-to-install and highly-manageable data connections, including private line, Ethernet, wavelength and Internet access to bandwidth-intensive organizations.

AFS is making significant investments in Ciena’s technology to support AFS’s evolving bandwidth demands and service requirements throughout the greater Atlanta market. The AFS/Ciena partnership enhances AFS’s current services portfolio, providing customers with an even more cost-effective solution for metro transport. This equipment upgrade, which brings an additional 400 Gb of bandwidth to AFS’s Atlanta metro backbone, makes it easier for AFS to add new customers while enabling greater bandwidth capabilities at a better value.

“We’re continuing to invest in the Atlanta market not just to keep up with the strong demand we’re seeing in Atlanta, but also to make it easier for our customers to scale their connectivity and add bandwidth quickly,” says Rich Coyle, Senior Vice President of Operations, American Fiber Systems. “In fact, we believe the Ciena platform provides our customers with a unique business advantage.”

AFS selected Ciena’s CN 4200® FlexSelect™ Advanced Services Platform Family for the upgrade of its metro and access networks, deploying the CN 4200 MC for optical services from customer premises, the CN 4200 for high-volume aggregation and transport, and the CN 4200 RS for grooming and routing of traffic at major network points of presence. The partnership also leverages Ciena’s ON-Center® Network and Service Management Suite, providing AFS a unique set of tools for efficient service deployment, proactive network management and service level management.

“Making the migration to enhanced service-driven networks is not without challenges, and service providers must consider existing fiber limitations, available technology and practical migration solutions,” said Mike Aquino, senior vice president of worldwide sales at Ciena. “By choosing Ciena, AFS is guaranteeing a reliable and operationally scalable network upgrade strategy, as our CN 4200 family makes convergence strategies practical, profitable and easy to implement.”