BANGALORE, INDIA: Verizon Business recently received approval from the Government of India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to operate two international gateways in Mumbai and Chennai, under its international long-distance (ILD) license. In this backdrop, Yali Liu, director, Asia Pacific, Network Planning - Verizon Business, talks in length with CIOL about the company's plans for India. Excerpts:

CIOL: What does this approval mean to Verizon Business?

Yali Liu: India is a very important market for our customers and Verizon Business. We already have a large customer base in India prior to receiving the gateway clearance. Verizon Business has deployed private IP nodes in five major cities in India: Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and New Delhi after we received our ILD/NLD licenses in January 2008. Before that, we have been offering network products and services into India to our multinational customers through partnerships with major Indian carriers for many years.

The Indian law requires telecommunications service carriers to provide for interception and monitoring of communications traffic by law enforcement agencies under certain conditions. Prior to receiving the gateway clearance from the Indian government, Verizon Business had to route its international traffic through local Indian telecom carriers that already had gateway clearance.

Now that we have received the gateway clearance, we can activate wholly owned capacity on SEA-ME-WE-4 (South-East-Asia- Middle East-West Europe) and other submarine cables and launch GDL (Global Data Link) private line services. Verizon Business now has more control over end-to-end network performance and product delivery. The gateway approval gives Verizon Business the opportunity to maximize its investment in SEA-ME-WE-4 undersea cable network and other submarine cables, including EIG (Europe-India Gateway), which is scheduled to be in service in 2010.

CIOL: How will India benefit out of EIG submarine cables?

YL: EIG provides complete route and cable landing diversity in India from SEA-ME-WE-4 and other systems. EIG will provide more bandwidth, flexibility and route diversity into India. The multinational corporations in India need the additional bandwidth, flexibility and route diversity to support their mission-critical applications and have connectivity around the clock with the rest of the world.

The submarine cables we have completed over the last few years and the addition of EIG cable system will give our customers an opportunity to keep their mission critical data, video, IP and voice traffic on the Verizon Business network.

CIOL: How safe are these cables as we have witnessed instances of cables disruptions in the past?

YL: Individual or ring protected submarine cables could no longer meet the customers' demands. Mission critical network requires the service provider's network to be operational even during multiple submarine cable failure scenarios. That's why, Verizon Business has implemented undersea mesh technology. We operate seven-way diverse mesh network between the US and Europe, and seven-way diverse mesh network among the US and Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. We plan to extend this industry leading global mesh to India and the Middle East with multiple diverse direct 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) capacity.

CIOL: Elaborate on the Verizon Business global Private IP network and its importance in the present scenario.

YL: Verizon Business has one of the most expansive global private IP MPLS (Multiple Protocol Switching Label) network in the world. We have private IP nodes in 146 markets in 59 countries, growing to 159 markets in 61 countries by the end of 2009. The network has 10G backbone capacity and with multiple layers of diversity built in. We also have diverse nodes (in diverse sites) in major markets. Our private IP network provides Verizon Business multinational customers with high bandwidth, low latency, unsurpassed network availability and global presence.

CIOL: Can you share Verizon Business' investment and expansion plans for India?

YL: We cannot provide specific investment numbers for India, but I can tell you that in 2009 we plan to continue network expansions in India. We plan to implement a private IP node in Pune, and new public IP nodes in Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, and Bangalore. Since receiving our ILD/NLD licenses in January 2008, we have already made significant investment in India.

In the current environment, it appears that the globalization trend continues and customers continue to demand for high capacity, better availability and guaranteed latency network to support their mission critical business needs. India is one of the strategic locations for our customers and we are committed to stay focused in supporting our customer's needs.