Verizon nears convergence goal

CHICAGO -- Verizon Business will announce vendors it has selected for its converged core router architecture and its next-generation multiservice access edge in the third quarter, according to officials interviewed at the NXTcomm conference here.

Verizon Business has had an RFP out for a few years on the converged core router. The carrier has been looking for a system that can consolidate its five separate IP networks into the same box with virtual segmentation and 100% availability.

The multiservice edge project will essentially be the next-generation Converged Packet Access (CPA) architecture, said Fred Briggs, executive vice president of network operations and technology at Verizon Business. CPA converges multiple services -- IP, Ethernet, private line data and voice -- over a single Ethernet interface for access to an IP/MPLS core at speeds up to 1Gbps.

The multiservice edge will extend access interfaces beyond Ethernet, Briggs said.

These projects fall under Briggs’ network technology priorities for this year, which include 100% availability, flow-through provisioning, predictable latency and accurate billing.

For availability and predictable latency, Verizon Business is extending its optical mesh technology onto three routes in the Pacific Ocean, Briggs said. It is on seven routes in the Atlantic and it helped Verizon Business maintain uptime on its Private IP VPN service during the devastating earthquake in Taiwan late last year.

The carrier plans to deploy the optical mesh across the United States in the second half of this year.

“One of the big drivers is latency,” Briggs said, as are better restoration, higher availability and predictable performance.

The carrier’s vendors for the optical mesh are Ciena, with its CoreDirector product, and Alcatel-Lucent’s LambdaUnite system.

Verizon Business is also turning up its 40Gbps route between New York and Washington, D.C. It will trial 100Gbps next year, Briggs said.

The carrier stopped short of saying if or when 40G might become a service.

“It’s got to make commercial sense,” said Nancy Gofus, senior vice president and chief marketing officer. Demand for 10G services has been relatively small, the Verizon Business officials said.

For flow-through provisioning, Verizon Business plans to deploy Tellabs reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexers in the second half of this year. The 1.6Tbps systems will help Verizon Business provision high-bandwidth services without truck rolls, Briggs said.

The carrier plans to build out its flow-through provisioning capabilities incrementally through 2009.

For accurate billing, Briggs predicted credits associated with erroneous charges will be reduced dramatically next year.

“Credits will be cut by half by the end of 2008,” he said.

The carrier hopes to achieve this goal by reducing the number of billing systems in operation. Today Verizon has 30 billing systems -- that number will be reduced to three or four, Gofus said. Some of the systems will “rust away” rather than be turned off and users migrated.