Ciena secures spot on AT&T's optical roster

While it was previously known that Ciena was going to be picked, AT&T confirmed that the vendor will be one of its domain suppliers for optical networking and transport gear.

Perhaps the only thing new here is that AT&T made an official announcement that Ciena is going to be its second optical domain vendor. AT&T, like many of its RBOC compatriots, tends to be a bit tight lipped about their vendor choices.

As suggested in a Light Reading article, Ciena became a favorite when it outbid Nokia Siemens Networks for Nortel Networks' Metro Ethernet Networks division. One of the things that made Nortel's MEN assets attractive to AT&T was its coherent 100 Gbps transport technology.

In the process, Ciena replaced Nokia Siemens Networks as one of AT&T's optical domain suppliers, while Fujitsu remains the second domain supplier.

For more:
- see the release here
- Light Reading has this article

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