Wednesday, May 14, 2008

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Verizon Cracks Mexico, Enhances Private IP, Joins LiMo

The Mexican government has given its blessing to Verizon Business directly delivering advanced communications services in that country.

The "Value Added" authorization, issued by Mexico's regulatory entity COFETEL, will enable Verizon Business to better serve multinational companies with operations in Mexico. Previously, the company had been delivering its services via partnership deals with local carriers.

Now that it can operate on its own, a new operating company -- Verizon Business Mexico -- will deliver a range of data and IP services, including Verizon Private IP, and Verizon Internet Dedicated and managed network services. Verizon Business also says it's in the final stages of deploying multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) nodes in Mexico City and Monterrey to support private and public IP services.

"Mexico is a key location for many of our multinational customers, and this authorization gives us more local capabilities to support their strategic business needs," comments Blair Crump, group president/international and premier accounts at Verizon Business. "We look forward to bringing our expertise to bear in Mexico as we expand our offerings and locally based operations."

As a global whole, Verizon Business says it will continue to add "a significant number" of Private IP nodes in key growth territories around the world, and it already has enhanced both DSL and Ethernet access capabilities.

"Verizon Business really gets the importance of providing converged access options globally to Private IP customers," says Sandra O'Boyle, research director/Business Telecom Services Europe at Current Analysis. "In our April 2008 research of global MPLS IP VPN services, Verizon Business stands out from competitors in terms of its extensive support for Ethernet access to Private IP, which is now available in 20 European countries."

In the past year, Verizon Business reportedly increased its total number of Private IP ports by more than 45 percent and its Ethernet access capabilities by more than 400 percent. These nodes have been established in Asia-Pacific (China, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea), Eastern Europe (Bulgaria and Romania) and Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Panama and Peru). Verizon Private IP is now available to customers in 121 countries and territories worldwide, with additional node deployments planned this year in Iceland, Pakistan, India and Russia.

Verizon Business also has doubled the number of countries with Ethernet access to Private IP, and it now serves Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

Verizon Business has also enhanced digital subscriber line and Secure Gateway access capabilities to Verizon Private IP; service now is available in 49 countries. These services, the company says, are particularly suited for customers requiring cost-efficient connections for remote workers and small branch offices.

"The rapid expansion of Verizon Business' global Private IP footprint reflects the company's commitment to supporting its customers, wherever they are around the world," says Mike Marcellin, vice president/product marketing. "Private IP is used by many of our global customers as the secure, scalable foundation on which they can build their future business-critical communications tools and services."

He continues, "We are enabling customers to deliver converged voice, data and video applications across global corporate networks with the speed, performance and reliability they need. At the end of the day, it's about enabling customers to realize their business objectives, wherever their business may take them."

In separate but related Verizon news, Verizon Wireless now has a seat on the board of the LiMo Foundation, a global consortium of mobile leaders bent on delivering an open, Linux-based handset platform to the whole mobile industry.

"The addition of Verizon Wireless to the LiMo roster is another critical milestone in our foundation's rapid growth and market impact," commented Kiyohito Nagata of NTT DoCoMo, chair of the LiMo Foundation. "In technical output, governance constructs and business models, LiMo lives out its belief that openness is the key to unlocking innovation to the benefit of the whole industry and mobile consumers everywhere." In a press conference earlier this morning, Kyle Malady, vice president/network for Verizon and Verizon Wireless, said Verizon hopes to help LiMo unify the mobile industry around openness and Linux as the key enablers to lowering development costs.

"Verizon Wireless is committed and invested in encouraging innovation, providing developers the opportunity to deliver new wireless choices and expanding the mobile market," said Kyle Malady, vice president of network for Verizon. "We expect our involvement with LiMo to advance these principles."

The LiMo Foundation says it's open to all vendors and service providers in the mobile communications marketplace, including device manufacturers, operators, chipset manufacturers, integrators and independent software vendors. Verizon Wireless joins the foundation's other 39 members. Seven other companies also joined LiMo today: SK Telecom, SFR, Infineon, Sagem, Kvaleberg, the Mozilla Foundation and Redbend.

"Verizon Wireless is demonstrating itself a champion of openness in mobile innovation by joining the board of LiMo Foundation," said Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation. "Major wireless service providers from across North America, Asia and Europe are now engaged in committed collaboration through LiMo. This offers further concrete evidence that LiMo is positioned at the heart of the rapidly emerging, industry-wide trend to secure the benefits of openness and choice in technology."

Adam Leach, a principal analyst at U.K.-based Ovum, lauded Mozilla in particular for joining the LiMo foundation, but he first commented on LiMo as a whole.

"The LiMo Foundation's heritage is firmly entrenched within the mobile industry. It was established in 2007 by Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, Motorola, Samsung, Panasonic and NEC," he says. "Its objective was to define the global standard for mobile Linux. However, at its inception, the organization, despite having some experience in shipping Linux-based devices, lacked commitment from open source players. This was addressed to some degree by subsequent rounds of recruitment."

He continues, "Nonetheless, the foundation's membership is still biased towards mobile, not open source, players. This is why Ovum believes that the decision by the Mozilla Foundation to join LiMo is of significant strategic importance to both foundations. For LiMo is it a validation of its collaborative development model and the IPR safe harbor that it creates, allowing proprietary and open source software to co-exist within a single platform. Mozilla also brings an established and much respected developer community to the platform."

According to Leach, Mozilla joining LiMo "represents an opportunity to establish a Mozilla-based mobile browser in the market by using LiMo as a distribution channel. The addressable market for full Web browsers on mobile is set to grow substantially over the next three years, and this provides Mozilla with a chance to catch-up with Webkit-based browsers such as those used within Safari on the iPhone, by Nokia on S60 phones, Opera Mobile and ACCESS NetFront. The continued momentum being demonstrated by LiMo is in sharp contrast to the progress being made by Google's Open Handset Alliance that, other than a couple of early prototype demos at this year's Mobile World Congress, has yet to show further convincing progress."

Leach does have a warning for both sides of the fence, however: "Beyond marketing and PR collateral, the real test for both LiMo and OHA will be how quickly and how many devices they can bring to market that are open and accessible to a wide range of third-party developers."