Verizon Business Advances Voice-Over-IP Services, Strengthens Global Platform for Unified Communications and Collaboration

NEW YORK, Dec. 7, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Business is introducing its voice-over-Internet Protocol portfolio in Switzerland, making it the eleventh country in Europe to benefit from the company's business-class VoIP services.

In addition, Verizon Business will introduce throughout Europe a new VoIP product service-level agreement, which is already available in the U.S.  Also, the company has certified Cisco VoIP and unified communications and collaboration gear to work with Verizon IP Trunking in the U.S. and Europe.

"Verizon Business continues to enhance and expand its VoIP offerings to create a powerful unified communications and collaboration platform for multinational enterprises," said Anthony Recine, vice president of networking and communications solutions for Verizon Business. "By expanding our VoIP portfolio in Switzerland, introducing a comprehensive VoIP service-level agreement and certifying the latest Cisco Unified Communications system with our world-class IP Trunking, we continue to advance the state of VoIP for our customers worldwide."

Verizon Business VoIP Services Come to Switzerland

Having the full Verizon Business VoIP portfolio (Hosted IP Centrex, IP Trunking and IP Integrated Access) available throughout Switzerland, with full two-way voice calling services for national and international calling, will enable large enterprises, as well as medium-size businesses, to completely replace traditional voice calling services in any of the countries where Verizon VoIP services are available.  

Locations in Switzerland are now also able to take advantage of virtually all the same product features and services available in the other 10 European countries where the service is available.  Leveraging the cloud services model, Verizon can make UC&C software and services available from an externally hosted platform, on a pay-per-user basis, so customers can avoid much of the expense and complexity of buying and managing their own equipment.

New VoIP SLAs Launch in U.S., Will Expand to Europe

Effective Nov. 4, Verizon Business made available a new VoIP product service-level agreement for U.S. VoIP customers.  The SLA increases the mean opinion score guarantee (a measure of voice quality) to 4.0 and introduces a new four-hour mean-time-to-repair metric.  The SLA also covers network availability and jitter (data-packet loss that can degrade or delay voice quality), making it one of the industry's most aggressive VoIP network-quality SLAs.  

The new SLA is available to all new and existing U.S. Verizon VoIP customers that use Verizon's Private IP or Internet Dedicated Access services, which provide exceptional VoIP call quality on both private and public IP-based networks.  A similar SLA will be launched for VoIP services in Europe in the first half of 2011.

New Product Certifications Provides More Choice for Customers Worldwide

Verizon Business has certified the latest Cisco VoIP and Cisco UC&C technologies to work with IP Trunking to provide more choice and flexibility with Cisco. With Cisco Unified Communications Manager, an enterprise-class VoIP call-processing system, customers can take advantage of advanced capabilities, such as video, mobility, presence and conferencing services.  

Verizon IP Trunking customers can also use Cisco Unified Border Element, an enterprise-focused session border controller to help control communications costs, improve network interconnections and enable rich collaboration applications.  Later this month, Verizon Business customers will also benefit from the certification of Unified Communications Manager with and without Cisco CUBE.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with one of the world's most connected IP networks to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions.  We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees – enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment.  Many of the world's largest businesses and governments – including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions – rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

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SOURCE Verizon Business