SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwire - November 17, 2008) - Covage has selected the Infinera DTN optical system (NASDAQ: INFN) for a nationwide network across France to support its wholesale telecom business with the speed and flexibility of Infinera's digital architecture and help it fulfill its mission of bringing greater competition to the French telecom market.

Covage, which is involved in the acquisition, development and operation of "Open Access Next Generation Networks" in France, provides wholesale bandwidth services to telecom operators, enabling communities to reduce the costs for communication services for enterprises and households, while extending broadband to a larger portion of the population and making new digital services available more widely. Covage is jointly owned by Axia Networks France, a wholly owned subsidiary of Axia NetMedia Corporation, and VINCI Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary of VINCI Construction France. It currently has interests in 12 regional networks and is building a national optical backbone to interconnect its regional networks and offer cost-effective carrier services to its customers nationwide.

Covage chose Infinera because of the speed, flexibility, and digital intelligence of Infinera's Digital Optical Networks. Infinera's use of photonic integration enables Covage to put more optical capacity in a smaller footprint than on competitor systems, helping it economize on operating expense. The separation between the line-side modules and the client-side modules enables Covage to offer many different services from the same system, offering further economies.

"Infinera's advanced technology, the intelligence in the platform, and the flexibility of the services allowed us to create a simple, straightforward, and very cost-effective offering for regional & national network traffic with traffic protection, which will be valuable to us in this highly competitive market," said Norbert Blanchard, Technical Operations Director at Covage.

"Using Infinera on our backbone network helps us build local projects with scalable bandwidth capacity by providing us with a cost-effective backbone network, which is essential because local officials are very concerned to keep subscription costs low for the end-users of the network," he added.

With Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization™, Infinera systems deploy a minimum of 100 Gigabits/second (Gb/s) on every line card, and capacity can be quickly and flexibly deployed and reconfigured to deliver a wide variety of services. Covage plans to be able to deliver services between most points on its network simply by fitting Infinera Tributary Adapter Modules (TAMs) at the endpoints of any circuit or service. This will enable it to deliver services in a matter of days, compared to most competitors in France who typically require around twelve weeks to deliver a service. Infinera's GMPLS network intelligence speeds up the deployment process by using software to recognize assets and configure services on the network.

"Covage's selection of Infinera for a nationwide French network reflects the continued momentum of Infinera's Digital Optical Networks paradigm with service providers across Europe," said Infinera CEO Jagdeep Singh. "We are pleased to support Covage with this network and help them bring more choices and competition to the French market."

The Infinera DTN is a Digital ROADM for long-haul and metro core networks, combining high-capacity DWDM transport, integrated digital bandwidth management, and GMPLS-powered service intelligence in a single platform.

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 optical networks 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 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, such as: that the speed of deployment and reliability of the Infinera system enables the provision of services more quickly than with traditional DWDM systems; that Infinera's Bandwidth Virtualization™ allows capacity to be quickly and flexibly deployed and reconfigured to deliver a wide variety of services; that the simplicity of operations has enabled delivery of high-bandwidth services quickly and cost-effectively to customers; that Infinera's use of photonic integration enables customers to put more optical capacity in a smaller footprint than on competitor systems, helping to economize on operating expense; and that the separation between the line-side modules; and that the client-side modules enables customers to offer many different services from the same system, offering further economies. 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 and uncertainties described more fully in our annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on February 19, 2008, our public announcements and other documents 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 Information: For further information Infinera corporate: Media: Jeff Ferry Infinera Tel. +1-408-572-5213 jferry@infinera.com Investors: Bob Blair Infinera Tel. +1-408-716-4879 bblair@infinera.com