Verizon has spent billions of dollars over the last few years digging trenches and laying fiber optic cable throughout the Northeast and West Coast. While the public face of all that fiber is the carrier's FiOS service for consumers and small businesses, Verizon also plans to deliver managed high-speed network services to large businesses over the same backbone.
Verizon wants to manage the jumble of integrated protocols and physical layers that now make up corporate networks with what is internally called Verizon Integrated Optical Services, scheduled for mid-2007, says Tom Roche, VP of advanced data and IP services for Verizon Business. Networks are complicated by voice over IP, storage area networking, large file transfers, business continuity requirements, legacy systems, and the need for regular upgrades, Roche says. Verizon sees fiber as the vehicle for that load and its optical services as the driver.
IS THERE DEMAND?
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Ups And Downs |
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Verizon's third fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30 resulted in:
147,000 new fiber optic services Internet customers
Data (nonvoice) revenue of $4.1 billion, an 89% year-over-year increase Revenue of $8.5 billion for its Verizon Wireless arm, making it the largest U.S. wireless carrier in the quarter
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Verizon also plans to expand fiber optic service for small businesses and branch offices, offering service-level agreements and upload speeds as fast as download speeds. Still, Roche drew a line between small-business services offered under the FiOS name and the higher-speed, managed business services it plans under VIOS. "For remote offices, for the branch, high-speed optical isn't going to make sense and never will from an ROI perspective," he says.
Roche could be underestimating the potential market. In New York, Optimum Lightpath, whose offerings start with a 10-Mbps fiber circuit, says speed and value are driving demand in industries such as health care and financial services, even in small offices. The Cablevision subsidiary, which serves 2,000 customers in the metro area, says one out of three new customers has fewer than 20 employees. AT&T also has seen increasing interest among small offices in the lower end of its fully managed OPT-E-MAN fiber line service, says Bob Walters, AT&T's executive director of metro data services.
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