Network equipment maker Ciena Corp said it expects strong growth in cloud computing and higher use of smartphones, and forecast stronger-than-expected revenue for the current quarter.

Ciena (Hanover, MD, USA) shares jumped as much as 15.5 percent on the Nasdaq on Thursday morning. Shares of rival Finisar Corp (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) were up 5 percent while those of Juniper Networks Inc (Sunnyvale, CA, USA) were up about 1 percent.

Optical network equipment supplier Cyan Inc recovered early losses on its heavily traded market debut as investors look to its ability to reduce dependence on a single customer.

Nearly 3.5 million shares had been traded by 2.00 p.m. ET, making Cyan (Petaluma, CA, USA) the fifth most-traded stock on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday afternoon.

The Petaluma, California-based company priced 8 million shares in the offering at $11 each, the mid-point of its planned price range, giving it a market valuation of about $490 million.

Network equipment maker Ciena Corp said its operating performance would improve in 2013 as telecom carriers boost spending to upgrade their networks after months of sluggish growth, sending its shares up as much as 5.5 percent.

Telecom carriers are rolling out their 4G LTE networks and are looking at optical equipment providers like Ciena who provide a key component to manage costs and modernize networks.

Mobile telecoms equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) said on Monday it is to sell its optical fiber networks unit to Marlin Equity Partners.

NSN (Helsinki, Finland) didn't give any financial details for the sale but said it would be completed in the first quarter of next year.

As a result of the deal as many as 1,900 employees, mainly in Germany and Portugal, will be transferred to the new company, NSN said in a statement.

On Friday, market research firm Infonetics Research released a new report stating that spending on optical gear grew 8% globally in the fourth quarter of 2011 (4Q11) over the previous quarter.

Zhone Technologies, Inc, a provider of telecommunications networking equipment, announced on Wednesday that through a partnership with BTC Networks, Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), a mobile voice and data service provider in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is utilizing Zhone's MXK Optical Line Termination (OLT) for its nationwide Fiber network.

Monaco:

WDM & Next Generation Optical Networking is to be held on the 18-21 June 2012 in Monte Carlo. Europe's premier optical networking brings together 550+ optical professionals for four days of structured networking and debate. The comprehensive operator led programme and professionally organised networking agenda is the meeting place for the regions thought leaders and decision makers and make WDM & Next Generation Optical Networking an unmissable event in the industry calendar.

SK Telecom (Seoul, South Korea), a mobile operator in Korea, will soon increase its network capacity by four times with 40 gigabits per second (40G) transmission, and prepare its network for transition to 100G capacity in the future. The operator has selected Nokia Siemens Networks’ (Espoo, Finland) 100G-ready optical network equipment for its capacity expansion. The system uses dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM), where a number of different wavelengths of light transport data down the same optical fiber, each carrying information at 40G.

Ciena Corporation (Linthicum, Md.), a supplier of telecommunications networking equipment, on Monday announced the evolution of its packet-optical portfolio designed to enable intelligent infrastructures using advanced silicon, software and switching technologies. Ciena also announced its OneControl Unified Management System, a component of its software portfolio that unifies visibility and control of wavelength, OTN and packet services from edge access through the network core.

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