Verizon Global Wholesale, CENX Earn Innovation Award for Carrier Ethernet Exchange Implementation

Verizon Global Wholesale and Ethernet exchange partner CENX have earned top honors from Global Telecoms Business magazine for giving Verizon's wholesale customers simplified access to a broad range of Ethernet services. The companies' win in the Ethernet Service Innovation category of the magazine's annual event recognizes their introduction of an Ethernet exchange service earlier this year.

In January, Verizon began offering its award-winning, certified Carrier Ethernet services to its global wholesale customers via the new CENX Carrier Ethernet Exchange in New York City.  Using the exchange service provides global carriers expanded options to deliver Ethernet services in the city.

Verizon's connection with CENX, a leading worldwide carrier exchange, enables significant new revenue opportunities for global wholesale carriers, offering them expanded options to support their customers.

"This award further validates the importance of supporting our global and domestic U.S. carrier customers as they develop their Ethernet offerings in a market that's exploding," said Quintin Lew, senior vice president of marketing for Verizon Global Wholesale.  "CENX provides value-added capabilities that are appealing to customers."

According to Nan Chen, CENX co-founder and CEO, the award demonstrates the importance to the global service community of better tools for addressing the logistic, technical, management and business challenges of Ethernet service trafficking.

"The intelligence CENX builds into its exchanges represents a critical factor in support of carrier customers of all sizes, and this award acknowledges the impact of our innovation and vision," Chen said.

At the CENX exchange, Verizon carrier customers configure their network interconnection to CENX as they choose.  CENX then handles the translations and interoperability between Verizon and its carrier customers as services are turned up, streamlining the detailed engineering of such service setups.

Carrier Ethernet plays a key role in meeting the demands of and supporting Ethernet growth, and this new approach furthers the deployment of many Ethernet-dependent applications.  Additionally, by using the CENX Market real-time portal, members of the CENX exchange planning for the delivery of Ethernet services are able to quickly confirm the details of specific Verizon service offerings.

The award recipients in various categories, announced at the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards Event in London Monday night (June 7), represent the most innovative projects in the industry worldwide in five key categories: fixed infrastructure innovation, wireless infrastructure innovation, wholesale service innovation, business service innovation and consumer service innovation.

"Verizon and CENX were selected for the award because the profound impact of Carrier Ethernet exchanges for the industry as a whole," said Alan Burkitt-Gray, editor, Global Telecoms Business. "This is a great example of both cooperation and innovation, in a rapidly growing sector of the market."

The Global Telecoms Business Innovation Awards were first presented in 2007, at a dinner attended by industry leaders from around the world.  Awards are for projects, not products, and are designed to celebrate collaboration between operators and vendors.   For each winning project, a telecoms service provider and a supplier received a trophy.

Global Telecoms Business magazine, which is read by leaders in the telecommunications industry worldwide, is part of the Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC group.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, NASDAQ:VZ), headquartered in New York, is a global leader in delivering broadband and other wireless and wireline communications services to mass market, business, government and wholesale customers.  Verizon Wireless operates America's most reliable wireless network, serving nearly 93 million customers nationwide.  Verizon also provides converged communications, information and entertainment services over America's most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers innovative, seamless business solutions to customers around the world.  A Dow 30 company, Verizon employs a diverse workforce of more than 217,000 and last year generated consolidated revenues of more than $107 billion.  For more information, visit www.verizon.com.
 
CENX, Inc. is the first and most connected Carrier Ethernet exchange provider to deliver carrier-neutral, location-neutral, Carrier Ethernet exchange services to global telecom/internet service providers. CENX interconnects service providers' Carrier Ethernet networks worldwide and enables vast revenue opportunities, dramatic cost-saving and Carrier Ethernet global ubiquity-a foundation for next generation telecommunications networks. Through its work in the MEF (http://www.metroethernetforum.org) and in the industry, the CENX management team has played a leading role in the definition of and standards for Carrier Ethernet and the development of the Carrier Ethernet market over the last eight years. For more information, visit www.cenx.com.

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