Nortel Picks Verizon IP Trunking Service

Nortel (NT) says its selection of Verizon’s (VZ) IP Trunking service will allow it to reduce its IT budget and improve operational efficiency. The overall goal is to consolidate Nortel’s U.S. corporate voice infrastructure.

In addition, Verizon Business will manage Nortel’s existing Verizon Private IP network, enabling Nortel to benefit from expanded managed network service capabilities and industry-leading service level agreements.

With Verizon IP Trunking service, Nortel will move from a distributed voice architecture to one that is simplified, centralized and more cost effective. The Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks (BEST) feature, which Verizon Business introduced earlier this year, is an on-demand networking capability that enables customers to use idle trunk capacity from one or more locations to dynamically accommodate increases in traffic at other locations, providing more design flexibility and reducing the total number of trunks required across the enterprise.

“Consolidating our voice infrastructure to VoIP will provide network efficiencies that serve to increase productivity while driving costs lower,” said Steve Bandrowczak, chief information officer for Nortel. “In the initial phase of deployment alone, we anticipate significant operational savings with a return on investment in a little over a year. The endgame is that it allows us to focus on our business, which is serving our customers.”