Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Verizon rolls out nationwide WAN service

news
Mar 12, 20072 mins

Enterprises can determine their own bandwidth and routing

Verizon Business on Monday rolled out a nationwide WAN service, allowing large organizations to use Ethernet to connect offices spread across the U.S.

Verizon’s Virtual Private LAN Service, or E-VPLS, is the first such service from large telecom carriers, the company said. The service, delivered over Verizon Business’ existing converged packet network, allows customers the flexibility to adjust their networks’ bandwidth from 1M bps (bits per second) to 1G bps, Verizon said.

The new service is aimed at companies that want the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Ethernet service paired with a nationwide WAN, Verizon said.

“We have extreme coverage,” said Michael Volgende, Verizon Business’ director of Ethernet services. “We’re not starting from scratch in terms of network deployment.”

In addition, the new service, available throughout most of the U.S. Monday, comes with service-level agreements that guarantee on-network Ethernet access 100 percent of the time, and 99.99 percent for off-network Ethernet access. The agreements include a mean time to repair of two hours for on-net Ethernet access.

By using Verizon Business’ current packet network, Verizon can offer a “very strong” service-level agreement, Volgende said. “It kind of demonstrates the confidence we have in the service offering,” he added.

E-VPLS allows customers to maintain control of their routing, instead of sharing it with Verizon, said Verizon Business, part of Verizon Communications Inc.

E-VPLS will allow customers to set priorities for applications through four classes of service: real time, priority, business and basic data. Real-time service is aimed at VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) and digital video applications, while applications like e-mail can get a lower priority.

In addition to commercial applications, the U.S. General Services Administration requested the service as part of its Networx program, designed to help federal agencies make the transition to next-generation networking services, Verizon said.

The service will cost about $48,000 a month for a typical Fortune 100 customer using E-VPLS to connect six sites spread across the U.S., Verizon said. That price includes bandwidth ranging from 10M bps to 100M bps. The same network would cost more than 25 percent more using traditional leased lines in a hub-and-spoke network, Verizon said.

Grant Gross

Grant Gross, a senior writer at CIO, is a long-time IT journalist who has focused on AI, enterprise technology, and tech policy. He previously served as Washington, D.C., correspondent and later senior editor at IDG News Service. Earlier in his career, he was managing editor at Linux.com and news editor at tech careers site Techies.com. As a tech policy expert, he has appeared on C-SPAN and the giant NTN24 Spanish-language cable news network. In the distant past, he worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minnesota and the Dakotas. A finalist for Best Range of Work by a Single Author for both the Eddie Awards and the Neal Awards, Grant was recently recognized with an ASBPE Regional Silver award for his article “Agentic AI: Decisive, operational AI arrives in business.”

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