Ciena's (CIEN) GeoMesh Extreme Solution Utilized by SUBCO
Ciena Corporation CIEN recently announced that Australia-based SUBCO was deploying its GeoMesh Extreme, powered by WaveLogic 5 Extreme in the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, for boosting capacity of Oman Australia Cable (OAC).
OAC is a 9,800km submarine cable linking Muscat, Oman and Perth, Australia. It was launched for commercial service in November 2022, with an alternative path that leads from Salalah, Oman into Europe and Africa to be ready by 2024.
By using GeoMesh Extreme, OAC has improved its capacity to a maximum of 48Tb/s, to support growing bandwidth demands in the region. By upgrading OAC, customers will get an “express gateway for onward capacity” from Australia to Africa, Europe and the Middle East, noted SUBCO.
Ciena Corporation Price and Consensus
Ciena Corporation price-consensus-chart | Ciena Corporation Quote
Based in Australia, SUBCO is a specialist consulting and investment corporation that has developed submarine cable networks like OAC, INDIGO West and INDIGO Central. SUBCO had also collaborated with Ciena to upgrade INDIGO cable earlier in 2020.
Ciena is a well-known provider of optical networking equipment, software and services. Increasing cloud adoption, rising demand for higher capacity and bandwidth, and proliferation of edge applications drive demand for Ciena’s diversified product portfolio.
Continued momentum in uptake of CIEN’s solutions is likely to drive the top line. In September 2023, Ciena’s sub-division, Blue Planet, announced its collaboration with Virgin Media Ireland to facilitate a three-year transition toward a complete fiber network and a shift from traditional cable services to fully automated and high-speed fiber broadband services.
Virgin Media will leverage Blue Planet’s intelligent automation platform for network and service automation to enhance user experience and provide ultra-fast broadband connectivity to its residential and business customers. Prior to that, Ciena’s Waveserver 5 compact interconnect platform, powered by WaveLogic 5 Nano (WL5n) 400ZR coherent pluggable, was deployed by a Service (IaaS) provider in Latin America — EdgeUno.
However, mounting order backlog and customer inventory levels due to lower spending by buyers amid economic troubles are likely to weigh on the company’s performance. Rising research and development costs to fend off stiff competition are headwinds. Also, reliance on third-party contract manufacturers and leveraged balance sheet are concerns for this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock.
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In the past year, shares of CIEN have gained 10% compared with the sub-industry’s growth of 9.8%.
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