Grant Gross
Senior Writer

Verizon Business expands network service in Europe, Asia

news
Jun 19, 20072 mins

Verizon Business' CPA will offers businesses 'broadband on demand'

Verizon Communications’ Business unit will expand its business-level data platform to parts of Europe and the Asia Pacific region this year, the company said Tuesday.

Verizon Business’ Converged Packet Architecture (CPA) combines IP (Internet protocol) and traditional data onto one common network-access interface, with the goal of allowing customers to more easily order bandwidth or make other changes.

CPA is “broadband on demand” for businesses, said Joseph Cook, Verizon Business’ vice president for global network engineering and planning. With the CPA interface, customers can order bandwidth ranging from 512Kbps to 1Gbps, he said.

Verizon is pushing into Europe and Asia-Pacific because many multinational corporations have offices there, and they want the same data services available as in the U.S., Cook said. Verizon Business is focused on becoming a top carrier for multinational corporations worldwide, company officials said.

In Europe, Verizon Business will deploy CPA in 19 cities this year, including London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Dublin, Madrid, Brussels, and Zurich.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Verizon Business is deploying CPA in five locations this year: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Verizon Business also continues CPA deployment in the U.S. It now serves 37 cities, and by the end of the year, will add nine more, including New Orleans, Louisiana; Orlando, Florida; and Memphis; and Nashville, Tennessee.

CPA supports legacy and newer services including IP, Private IP, Ethernet, private line data, voice traffic, Ethernet Virtual Private Line and Virtual Private LAN Service. It provides a single packet-access connection via an Ethernet interface at speeds up to one gigabit per second, often called GigE.

Customers can also use CPA to migrate from older time division multiplexing (TDM) hierarchy to a packet-based technology.

Some traditional network access plans require separate lines for voice, video, data and Internet, and require specific bandwidth contracts. CPA, instead, converges all applications on a single carrier-class packet access network and improves operating efficiency, Verizon Business said.

MCI, which was acquired by Verizon in January 2006, launched its CPA service in July 2004. Analysts praised the move, saying it would help business customers move to packet-based services.

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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