By Verizon Press Release

February 27, 2009

BASKING RIDGE, N.J. — Verizon Business has received approval from the government of India's Department of Telecommunications to operate the company's two international gateways in Mumbai and Chennai, under its international long-distance license.  The approval allows Verizon Business to offer its suite of private line services to multinational customers and to activate the company's wholly owned submarine cable capacity to India, providing direct connections to Verizon's global network, one of the largest such networks in the world. 

International gateways are transmission devices and switches that enable telecom companies to carry international communications traffic across country borders.  By operating its own gateways in India, Verizon Business will retain full control of its international network capacity into and out of India and of its global Private IP and Private Line services. As a result, the company will be better able to monitor end-to-end network performance and product delivery.

Prior to receiving routine security clearance from the Indian government to operate the gateways, Verizon Business had to route its international traffic through local Indian telecom carriers.

“Receiving the international gateway clearance is a major milestone for Verizon Business in India,” said Yali Liu, director of Asia-Pacific network planning for Verizon Business.  “We worked diligently on this gateway project so we could offer our customers more products and services.  The services we offer on our network will help our customers meet their critical communications needs in India and their offices worldwide.” 

The Verizon Business global Private IP network is the essential platform for providing multinational companies with integrated communications, IT and security solutions.

Since receiving its international and national long-distance licenses in India in January 2008, Verizon Business has begun an aggressive infrastructure expansion.  The company deployed a Private IP multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) network in five major cities in India: Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi.

The network nodes in each city — located in key technical sites where multiple service providers have easy access to the Verizon Business network — allow access using both TDM (time division multiplexing) and Ethernet technologies.  The company began offering Private IP services under its own licenses on July 1, 2008.

The gateway approval also gives Verizon Business the opportunity to maximize its investment in the 20,000-kilometer (12,000-mile) Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4 undersea cable network and other submarine cables including the Europe India Gateway (EIG), currently under construction, from the United Kingdom to India.  Verizon Business is the only U.S.-based company that is a member of the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable consortium. The company can now activate wholly owned capacity on SEA-ME-WE-4 and other existing submarine cables into India. The EIG submarine cable network is scheduled to be in service in 2010.

“All of our work in India is part of our global network strategy of investing in infrastructure assets and capabilities to support our customers' business growth,” Liu said.

New Node in Pune

The company will continue its aggressive expansion in India this year by deploying a new Private IP MPLS node in Pune during the second half of 2009, expanding its backbone network and rolling out new services for multinational customers with operations in India, as well as India-based companies.

“We have been focused on this fast-growing telecom market for years,” Liu said.  “Our infrastructure work in India and this recent approval for the international gateways definitely give Verizon Business an opportunity to add needed capacity and improve network performance as we expand our presence in the country. India is a key global telecommunications and transit hub country.”