TMCnews Featured Article

Verizon, whose CEO Ivan Seidenberg gave the opening keynote address at SuperComm (News - Alert) 2009 yesterday, this unleashed a flurry of news, including the unveiling of its cloud-based Application Assurance service by its business services arm, the announcement that it has circled the globe with optical undersea meshing, and has received NEC’s (News - Alert) Empowered by Telecommunications Award.

 

Application Assurance is a SaaS (News - Alert)-based offering enabling business customers to monitor application and network traffic on their Private IP services. The SaaS offer launches globally in December and is powered by Fluke Networks’ Visual Performance Manager. It provides an enterprise-wide view of how applications such as e-commerce Web sites, VoIP and CRM software are performing and how that performance is affecting end users.

 

As for the undersea meshing announcement, what’s new here is that Verizon has extended this technology to the Middle East. The first phase of the extension includes installation of communications equipment in Egypt.

 

Verizon Business (News - Alert) won the Empowered by Telecommunications Award for its leadership role in optical control plane technology, which allows electronic devices within optical networks to easily communicate with each other via software installed on network elements. That simplifies operations and allows for near real-time provisioning of designated new circuits.

 

In his speech, Seidenberg hebelieves the current era of communications is “one of the most dynamic and innovative in our long and proud history.”

 

He went on to say: “Four years ago, I stood on this stage and talked about how fiber and 3G mobile were transforming broadband and wireless. Three years ago, we talked about how IP technologies were creating a flatter, more networked global economy. Two years ago, we signaled the melding of TV and Internet by introducing you to our 1 millionth FiOS (News - Alert) TV customer. Last year, we previewed the ‘everything connected’ world being ushered in by 4G mobile technologies. And this year, we’re seeing an explosion of new devices, applications and tools to deliver all this power to customers over the high-I.Q. networks our industry has built.”

 

The economy has hit highs and lows, he continued: “It doesn’t matter. Communications companies are doing what we’ve always done: Invest, innovate and deliver service and value to customers.”

 

He explained that investment and innovation has never been more important than it is right now. Verizon has invested more than $80 billion over the last five years to build its platforms for growth, and America’s telecom companies invest more in networks every year than the federal government invests in transportation, he said.

 

“In fact, if you exclude real estate, investment in information, communications and technology accounted for an astonishing 43 percent of all capital investment in the U.S. last year,” he said. “Since the start of the recession, these investment levels have held up better than almost any other sector of the economy – down just 2.5 percent through the second quarter of ’09, as compared with a drop of more than 20 percent in private investment as a whole.”

 

The key to a smart economy is smart technology that can change business models and society, he said.

 

“Our industry is building the smart networks that will be a platform for growth, not just for us but for America and the world,” he added. “And Verizon is in the very center of this transformation, as we reinvent our networks around mobility, broadband and global connectivity.”