Decades of experience in building and deploying next-generation optical solutions, coupled with ongoing technology leadership, has been recognized through Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] being named Optical Network Vendor of the Year in the Telecom Asia Readers' Choice Awards.

The awards recognize the technology innovations and contributions to the industry made by top telecommunications vendors operating across Asia. Companies were nominated by 78 analysts, consultants and high-level telco executives. The finalists were named by Telecom Asia's editorial team and winners chosen by Telecom Asia's online subscriber base of Asia service providers.

Nortel was nominated for its history of optical networking innovation, most recently with the 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine, a 40G backbone solution that boosts performance by four times over existing 10G solutions while providing a cost-effective upgrade path to 100G. These solutions are a core element of Nortel's portfolio of products designed to help carriers keep ahead of increasing bandwidth demands in the era of Hyperconnectivity – the new era of communications in which anything that can be connected to the network, is connected.

"For 11 years we’ve presented awards to Asian service providers, but up until now have ignored the companies supplying the operators with the advanced technology to make their services possible. The best way to judge the companies offering the most relevant services is to ask their customers, who are our readers," said Joseph Waring, group editor of Telecom Asia. "The volume and quality of the nominations, as well as the response from readers, has been fantastic. The voting was extremely close in a number of categories, and there were a couple of surprise winners that weren’t ranked high during the nomination phase, but were very popular among readers.”

"In the optical network category, the analysts who nominated Nortel pointed to the company’s recent successes in 40/100G market as putting it ahead of the pack,” Waring added. "Nortel is honored to have been named as Optical Network Vendor of the Year," said Anthony Mclachlan, vice president for Carrier Networks with Nortel Asia. "The 2008 launch of our 40G/100G optical solution marked a major milestone for Nortel. We already have over 35 contracts for the solution – including nine in Asia. With customers demanding ever more innovative services, our solutions are giving carriers the headroom to deliver Carrier Ethernet services, hosted voice, unified communications, multi-channel IPTV, high-definition videoconferencing and other applications that are fuelling the exploding bandwidth demands of today’s hyperconnected users. And, at a time of considerable financial restraint, a cost-effective upgrade that delivers huge capacity gains at low incremental cost is just what the market needed."

Nortel's 40/100G optical solution is a plug-and-play solution that uses Nortel's innovative Dual Polarization QPSK technology to help carriers quadruple their broadband capacity, with a further 2.5 times performance boost in the future, without modifying their existing networks. Released in mid-2008, the solution is already powering bandwidth upgrades at more than 35 organizations worldwide and is being deployed in metropolitan, long haul and submarine network applications.

Some of the latest deployments include SK Broadband in South Korea, Bell Canada, the Southern Cross and the high-performance 100G backbone at this month's SC08 high-performance computing conference in Austin, Texas.

About Nortel

Nortel is a recognized leader in delivering communications capabilities that make the promise of Business Made Simple a reality for our customers. Our next-generation technologies, for both service provider and enterprise networks, support multimedia and business-critical applications. Nortel’s technologies are designed to help eliminate today's barriers to efficiency, speed and performance by simplifying networks and connecting people to the information they need, when they need it. Nortel does business in more than 150 countries around the world. For more information, visit Nortel on the Web at www.nortel.com. For the latest Nortel news, visit www.nortel.com/news.