The US company has signed a deal with state-owned wholesale company NBN Co to use Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN)
Robert Le Busque, regional managing director of Verizon in Australia, New Zealand and India, said: “Verizon is pleased to be able to present a compelling alternative to Australian enterprise and government businesses.”
In official terms, Verizon is an NBN reseller, using wholesaler’s infrastructure to deliver NBN Enterprise Ethernet and enterprise broadband bundles to its business and government clients. But Verizon said it would also offer its managed network services – including software defined networking (SDN) and virtual network service (VNS) bundles – over the NBN infrastructure.
NBN Co said two weeks ago that it was on schedule to complete its build-out of its wholesale, equal-access broadband network by the end of June 2020.
Though initially conceived as a last-mile wholesale service connecting homes and business premises, so that retail companies could sell their own services over NBN fibre, the project has been targeting business and enterprise.
Le Busque said: “A robust network is the backbone of any business, and particularly today, where digital business is the norm, and organisations are increasingly looking for scalable, flexible network capacity to support global growth.”
Verizon said its agreement with NBN Co marked “yet another milestone for the business in Australia”. The company has operated in Australia for over 20 years and it serves 75-plus federal and state government agencies in the country. Verizon is also a panellist on the whole-of-Australian-government telecommunications services panel, which provides coordinated telecommunications services to the Australian federal government.
“This agreement provides choice and competition that hasn't existed on this scale before,” said Le Busque. “Businesses, particularly those outside of the major cities, deserve access to the globally recognised, best in class services and capabilities that Verizon offers.”
