Verizon started the new year off by combining its domestic and wholesale international operations, a move the company says is aimed at integrating and broadening services, delivery and support functions.
A new unit, Verizon Global Wholesale, combines the former International Partner Services and Verizon Partner Solutions. The combined units will combine their sales and marketing teams as well.
Wholesale is a competitive but highly lucrative market, made even more challenging by the move to economics-altering IP technologies both in the core and long-haul markets on the one hand, and and VoIP and other low-cost-per-minute IP solutions on the other. That combination means the number of wholesale minutes being horse-traded are higher than ever, but so is the competition to carry them.
For its part, Verizon said it leads the industry in international voice volume share, with offices in 75 countries on six continents.
In other Verizon Business news today, the group detailed progress made during fourth quarter of 2009 in its new cloud and IT consulting businesses. These included the rollout of professional services developed specifically for the health care and utility industries, global expansion of the company’s virtual private LAN service and the launch of cloud-based security services.