Verizon Takes Ethernet Worldwide
By Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
October 26, 2006 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Since the formal January 6 debut of the merged MCI and Verizon, telecommunications giant Verizon Business (verizonbusiness.com) has been busy expanding its global reach.
One market on which the company has placed particular focus is its Ethernet services. This week, Verizon announced it has expanded its Ethernet virtual private line international service from the United States to six countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region.
US and multinational companies with locations in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan will now be able to access Verizon Business EVPL International as a standard service, allowing them to connect within those regions.
Alla Reznik, group manager of Ethernet marketing for Verizon Business, says the Ethernet service expansion into Asia-Pacific is two-fold.
“This is an extension of our existing EVPL service to Asia-Pacific regions, as well as intra-pacific regions,” says Reznik. “So not only are we taking the service in between the regions, we are also making it available for customers who want to connect to those locations in the region.”
Customers can choose to use Ethernet either as a standalone end-to-end service in the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, or as a means of accessing the Internet or private IP, Verizon Business’ MPLS-based virtual private network offering.
Currently available between the US and 10 European countries, the EVPL International service offers customers secure and highly available network solutions for efficient connections between local area and wide area networks.
Overall, Verizon Business?s EVPL service enables connections between the US and the Asia-Pacific regions, as well as to 10 European countries, without the need for additional customer premises equipment.
The service is designed for companies such as financial institutions that rely on the secure transmission of data from point to point.
“Verizon Business strategies have always been to offer seamless services across the continent,” says Reznik. “Not only would we offer services in the metro spaces but also in the international scale, taking it globally.”
In its March 2006 survey of North American and European network and telecommunications, Forrester Research demonstrated that 21 percent of IT executives responsible for international telecoms at North American multinational corporations are “very interested” while 69 percent are “somewhat interested” in adopting international Ethernet services.
The expansion adds to Verizon Business’s portfolio of Ethernet services around the world, which includes Ethernet private line in 145 US metro markets and 10 European countries, Ethernet virtual private line in 145 US metro markets and six Asia-Pacific countries and territories, as well as between the US and six Asia-Pacific regions, and between the US and 10 European countries, E-LAN services within 53 metro markets in the US, Ethernet access for private IP, and the Internet throughout the US within 19 European countries and seven countries within the Asia-Pacific region.
“This is a tremendous step forward for us, as well as the industry in general, in making Ethernet a global place,” says Reznik. “It’s particularly important for our multinational customers who have locations in the US and already have operations in Asian-Pacific or are just about to open their operations in the Asia-Pacific and want to extend their services that they are already using there to those locations.”
