Seminole County Upgrades to New Converged Network with ADVA Optical Networking's FSP 3000


MUNICH, Germany, Oct. 21, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) --


 Quick and cost-effective deployment of ADVA's  converged voice, data
  and video solution over a common metro optical network supports
             Florida government's growing requirements for 
                          bandwidth and speed

ADVA Optical Networking (Other OTC:ADVOF) (FSE:ADV), a leading global provider of optical networking solutions, today announced that its Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 3000 has been deployed by the Seminole County, Florida, government to quickly and cost-effectively accomodate growth in its voice, data, and video bandwidth requirements. Seminole County selected Siemens Information and Communication Networks to deploy ADVA's FSP 3000 as a converged network solution over a common metro optical network. Siemens resells ADVA's FSP products, including the FSP 3000, through a strategic and long-term partnership between the two companies.

With the introduction of new voice, data, and video applications, the Seminole County government's bandwidth needs had exceeded the capabilities of its OC-3 Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) infrastructure. Expansion of the county's infrastructure through deployment of additional optical fiber was found to be too expensive and time-consuming, so Seminole County instead sought a solution based on Dense Wavelength Division (DWDM) technology that would expand the capacity of its existing installed fiber infrastructure. ADVA's FSP 3000 was selected because of its scalability, interoperability with legacy Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network equipment, flexibility in application support, and low total cost of ownership.

"We saved a tremendous amount of time and took advantage of the bandwidth from the moment we plugged ADVA's solution in," said Greg Holcomb, Information Technologies Manager for the Seminole County government. "We would have been looking at probably two months to a year to lay all of the new fiber we would have required. The proposal from ADVA said its system was 'plug and play' and could be installed in two weeks. We figured that wasn't possible, but, literally within two weeks, we had scaled from 10Mbit/s to Gigabit Ethernet speeds and were running at full speed."

Brian P. McCann, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at ADVA Optical Networking, added, "Seminole County is a case where the return on investment for the FSP 3000 was virtually instantaneous. The government experienced an immediate, tremendous bandwidth increase, without incurring the high cost of installing new fiber in the streets. The FSP 3000 will furthermore easily scale to meet the government's needs for transporting voice, data, and video applications on a common metro optical network for the foreseeable future."

The FSP 3000 employs parallel use of DWDM and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) technology to enable all protocols between 8Mbit/s and 10Gbit/s and up to 256 applications to be transported over one single fiber pair. The system's design supports point-to-point, linear add/drop, ring, and meshed network topologies of up to 10 nodes across distances up to 500 kilometers without regeneration. More information about the FSP 3000 and key applications can be found on ADVA's web site, www.advaoptical.com.

ABOUT ADVA OPTICAL NETWORKING

ADVA Optical Networking is a leading global provider of optical networking solutions for rapid and cost-effective provisioning of high-speed data, storage, voice, and video services in the metropolitan area. ADVA's carrier-class portfolio is comprised of the Fiber Service Platform family of products - explicitly designed to ensure the lowest total cost of ownership. ADVA's solutions have been deployed at over 70 carriers and service providers (including PTTs, RBOCs, LECs, and IXCs) and more than 500 enterprises worldwide. ADVA's products are sold through an international network of blue-chip distribution partners in addition to its own direct sales force. Further information about ADVA Optical Networking: www.advaoptical.com.

PUBLISHED BY:

ADVA AG Optical Networking, Martinsried/Munich and Meiningen, Germany ADVA Optical Networking Inc., Mahwah/New Jersey, USA ADVA Optical Networking Corp., Tokyo, Japan www.advaoptical.com



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