LAS VEGAS, June 18 /PRNewswire/ --

- Company Expands and Strengthens Key Components, Including VoIP and Conferencing, to Enable Unified Communications

Verizon Business is expanding and strengthening its unified communications services to help multinational companies, faced with dramatically rising travel costs, collaborate better and improve their business processes.

Unified communications (UC) uses Internet protocol networks to integrate various systems, media, devices and applications, allowing for more effective and efficient communications. At the NXTcomm'08 trade show today, Verizon Business is announcing the following new features and capabilities of the company's suite of unified communications and collaboration offerings:

-- Expansion of the Verizon voice-over-IP (VoIP) portfolio, which provides a foundation for unified communications, to four more European countries -- Spain, Italy, Ireland and Sweden -- bringing the total to 10.

-- International expansion of the company's Integrated Communications Package (ICP), part of the UC platform, to 10 countries in Europe in local languages and integration with Verizon Conferencing for more efficient collaboration. The service was originally introduced to U.S. customers in August 2007.

-- Employment of the newest Microsoft Office Live Meeting platform for Verizon Net Conferencing, including a redesigned interface and support for live video. In addition, Verizon Business is introducing enhanced Web-based tools to better manage conference calls.

"We're helping our customers make the most of their IP networks and IP-based services by tying these components together to transform the way companies communicate and collaborate," said Nancy Gofus, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Business. "Whether companies are managing a mobile workforce or looking to do their part to keep the environment green by minimizing travel, Verizon Business continues to develop and implement powerful new collaboration solutions for our business customers around the world."

[To listen to a podcast about how Verizon Business is advancing global collaboration, visit http://tinyurl.com/3mzpzm.]

With the expansion of its VoIP portfolio in Europe rolling out over the next two months, Verizon Business will make its enhanced ICP offering available to hosted-VoIP customers in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Spain, Italy, Ireland and Sweden. The enhancements will allow corporate employees to more efficiently manage their voice and data communications. From a single user interface, workers can control incoming and outgoing calls, access a single unified voice mail, manage their online presence, send instant messages, synchronize their contacts and calendars, and expand their mobility and teleworking capabilities, including softphone functionality.

ICP users will also be able to manage conference-call scheduling and manage presence to initiate Instant Meeting and Net Conference calls by seeing who is available to invite and participate. They will also be able to import conferencing meeting subscriptions, "drag and drop" conference participants into a meeting scheduler, and schedule single or recurring audio and Net conferences.

Net Conferencing powered by Office Live Meeting makes it easier for large businesses and government organizations to experience the benefits of Web conferencing, whether users are conducting simple impromptu collaboration sessions, formal Web-based meetings, advanced online training or large communication events. Verizon Business is rolling out the new version in phases, and it should be available to all Net Conferencing customers by the end of the summer.

To make conferencing even easier, new Web-based audio conferencing tools will replace the need to download software or plug-ins. Web Moderator for Instant Meeting and Meeting View for moderated conference calls are now available in HTML format. These enhancements are available to customers around the world, with versions in French, German and Japanese becoming available later this summer.

"Verizon Business' newest collaboration offerings are leveraging IP communications to help workers more quickly and efficiently meet with colleagues, customers and business associates," said Dustin Kehoe, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "This advanced collaboration capability is becoming widely recognized as a critical competitive advantage, especially for companies with global reach. The fact that Verizon Business is one of the first in Europe to offer UC products on an international level speaks for itself."

Verizon Business this year will continue to build upon its portfolio of solutions to bring together industry-leading customer premises equipment, software and network-based components to enable enterprises to take full advantage of unified communications and collaboration services.

About Verizon Business

Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ), operates the world's most connected public IP network and uses its industry-leading global-network capabilities to offer large-business and government customers an unmatched combination of security, reliability and speed. The company integrates advanced IP communications and information technology (IT) products and services to deliver leading enterprise solutions including managed services, security, mobility, collaboration and professional services. These solutions power innovation and enable the company's customers to do business better. For more information, visit www.verizonbusiness.com.

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Web site: http://www.verizon.com http://www.verizonbusiness.com http://tinyurl.com/3mzpzm

Debbie Lewis of Verizon Business, +1-610-257-7974, debbie.lewis@verizon.com /Company News On-Call: http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/094251.html