Verizon’s $17 Billion Network Investment in 2009 Pays Off

(Top News, 30 Dec 2009)

Verizon continued to go the distance in 2009 with its secure, reliable global network, which is the essential foundation for the company’s award-winning wireline and wireless products and services for consumer, business and wholesale customers.

Verizon invested more than $17 billion this year in its leading wireless and wireline networks in the U.S. and internationally. The Verizon global IP network serves more than 2,700 cities in 159 countries, and its wireless network reaches approximately 289 million Americans.

“It’s no accident that again this year, Verizon’s consumer and business services won major industry awards,” said Dick Lynch, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Verizon. “The better the network, the better the performance of the applications that ride on them. It’s as simple as that.”

Verizon’s business, government and wholesale customers rely on the company’s leading global IP network and advanced IP-based voice, video and data services and application aware tools, to provide an essential platform for customers’ multinational business operations. Verizon continued to receive top honors from industry analysts and associations for its global network services.

In 2009, FiOS Internet, which rides on Verizon’s all-fiber network, won a Readers Choice Award from PCMag.com, for the fourth consecutive year. FiOS Internet was ranked No. 1 in speed, overall customer satisfaction and reliability in the current survey.

Verizon Wireless topped the PCMag.com 2009 Service and Reliability Survey and received the Readers’ Choice Award for Cell Services.

Global network capabilities drive leading performance
Strategic network investments in 2009 provided additional reliability, resiliency and performance for Verizon’s business, government and wholesale customers. Among the highlights:
• With the launch of its multiyear packet optical transport platform strategy, Verizon is creating a single, higher-capacity global platform that combines optical transport with advanced packet-switching technology. This optical switching gear can handle both traditional, time-division multiplexing transmissions as well as packet traffic to create a single, high-capacity intelligent network. Verizon has plans to integrate packet capabilities into its ultra-long-haul (ULH) network by early 2011.

• In December, Verizon became the first communications carrier to successfully deploy a commercial 100Gbps (gigabits per second) ultra-long-haul optical system for live traffic on the company's European optical core network between Paris and Frankfurt. The accomplishment marked the first time for deployment of ultra-long-haul 100G using a single channel on a production network.

• With more than 5,200 additional miles added in 2009, Verizon continued to extend its ultra-long-haul network. Regions added this year include France and central regions of the U.K. as well as new routes in the existing ULH network in the U.S. ULH technology streamlines the network infrastructure and extends transmission without regeneration, eliminating thousands of pieces of equipment and physical connections among network elements, resulting in a more manageable and reliable network. ULH supports both 40G and 100G capacity, which pave the way for high-bandwidth data applications as customers push more high-bandwidth-intensive applications such as immersive video and bandwidth on demand.

• In 2009 Verizon extended its optical-mesh architecture into the Middle East. With recent mesh deployments in Mumbai and Chennai, India; Marseille, France; and Singapore, Verizon can seamlessly reroute traffic to alternate paths in the event of multiple breaks in undersea or land cables. With a stake in more than 80 submarine cable systems worldwide, Verizon was the first service provider to deploy undersea mesh technology – providing multiple diverse paths for voice and data traffic reliability – to connect major submarine cable systems traversing the Atlantic Ocean, with seven-way diversity. Verizon also deployed seven-way diversity on its Pacific Ocean submarine cable networks, enabling the company to more quickly reroute traffic in more directions to meet the needs of its customers worldwide.

• Verizon continued to extend the benefits of converged packet architecture (CPA) by adding 16 sites in 2009. CPA converges all services, whether IP, data or voice, onto one common network-access interface, allowing customers to more easily and efficiently make network adaptations. CPA supports a full range of legacy and advanced services such as IP, Private IP, Ethernet, private line data, voice traffic, Ethernet Virtual Private Line and Virtual Private LAN Service, now available in Europe, Asia Pacific and North America.

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