Pacific Crossing picks Lucent to manage U.S. - Japan submarine link

January 19, 2006 Murray Hill, NJ -- Lucent Technologies has announced a four-year managed services agreement worth more than $10 million to operate and manage the U.S.-based network facilities of Pacific Crossing Ltd. (PCL). PCL owns and operates the PC-1 trans-Pacific fiber-optic cable, which it says is one of the two fastest and largest telecommunications cables between the U.S. and Japan.

Under the agreement, Lucent will provide PCL with a range of managed services, including multi-vendor equipment maintenance, network operations such as performance management and alarm monitoring, and facilities and staff management. Lucent will also have responsibilities for the management of PCL's U.S. operations centers.

The PC-1 system is a high-capacity optical cable that stretches under the Pacific Ocean and is approximately 20,900 route km. (more than 13,000 route mi.) in length. According to PCL, with 180 Gbit/sec currently lit and upgrade capacity of an additional 460 Gbit/sec, the system is a vital link in the growing Asia-Pacific telecommunications market. PCL says that, according to recent estimates, the PC-1 system services nearly 20% of the world's daily trans-Pacific telecommunications traffic. The system has cable landing stations in Grover Beach, CA; Harbour Pointe, WA; Ajigaura, Japan; and Shima, Japan.

"In reviewing our options to streamline our business and gain operating efficiencies, PCL has turned to Lucent for the outsourcing the day-to-day operations of our cable landing stations," comments Brian Kushner, president and CEO of PCL.

"This deal underscores our continuing traction in the managed service space," concludes Paul Higgs, vice president of Lucent's Worldwide Services operations in the Asia-Pacific region and China.