READING, England, January 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Assessment Based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

Leading industry analyst firm Gartner Inc. has positioned Verizon Business in the Leaders quadrant among Pan-European network services providers in its new report, Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service Providers, 2008.(i)

The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant examines network service providers that generate at least euro 100 million in enterprise network services revenue contracted in Europe (not merely revenue for delivery in Europe under contract from non-European sources). To qualify, providers had to offer voice, data, managed network services and value-added services to enterprise customers across multiple geographies in Europe.

According to Gartner, providers positioned in the Leaders quadrant have a full portfolio of voice and data services, including relatively new offerings in areas such as application-aware networking, WAN optimization and hosted communications applications. These services will be delivered with good quality across a wide area of coverage at competitive prices by account teams that are typically closer to the customer. Leaders have a strong vision of the market and their role in it, and they will typically be able to address a wider range of customers (in terms of size, geography and service requirements) with their service offerings than others in this Magic Quadrant.

Nancy Gofus, Verizon senior vice president of global business products, said: We believe our position in the Leaders quadrant reflects our ongoing commitment to the European market, including the ongoing expansion of our network-based, global solutions portfolio. We have extensive network coverage throughout Europe, and in the past year have further broadened our solutions portfolio to accommodate the requirements of our customers, including the deployment of high-capacity Ethernet services. Our aim is to continue to deliver unsurpassed global solutions to our multinational customers, while making it as simple as possible for them to do business with us. We have therefore also continued to focus on streamlining our customer-facing processes, and expanding our customer self-service tools, to ensure a consistent and high quality customer experience wherever our customers work with us in the world.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with the world's most connected IP network to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions. We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees - enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment. Many of the world's largest businesses and governments - including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions - rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com

(i) Gartner Research Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service Providers, 2008, December 9, 2008, authors - Neil Rickard and Katja Ruud. Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00163121

Clare Ward of Verizon Business, +44-118-905-3501, clare.ward@verizonbusiness.com