PARIS, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- More businesses can now maximize the potential of their IP-enabled communications, thanks to Verizon Business. The company's award-winning Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks (BEST) feature is now available in Europe, enabling customers to enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their IP networks by allowing capacity to be allocated on demand to support business needs across customers' VoIP locations.

The BEST feature, available with selected Verizon voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) services, lets enterprises use idle trunk -- or communication line -- capacity from one location to support an increase in traffic elsewhere. Organizations are therefore able to optimize their IP network utilization and achieve cost efficiencies.

"Verizon Business' Burstable Enterprise Shared Trunks (BEST) feature enhances the company's European VoIP portfolio by enabling European enterprises to manage IP network capacity and idle ports in near real-time to support peak call volumes across different geographical locations," said Dustin Kehoe, principal analyst at Current Analysis. "The benefits it brings are further enhanced when combined with the company's centralized multisite, multicountry IP Trunking offer allowing users to centralize their IP PBX in a core location. These are further examples of Verizon Business expanding its VoIP solutions and applying innovation that was not possible in the TDM world."

The BEST feature is available with Verizon Hosted IP Centrex, Verizon Integrated Access and Verizon IP Trunking. Verizon Hosted IP Centrex is Verizon Business' premier "in-the-cloud," network-based, VoIP service. Verizon Integrated Access is an option for businesses that wish to keep their existing key telephone system or PBX but still want to leverage the benefits of VoIP technology. Verizon IP Trunking allows customers with an IP PBX to leverage direct Session Initiation Procotol (SIP) connectivity into their equipment, minimizing customer premises equipment (CPE) gateway costs.

With the introduction of BEST in Europe, global enterprises can individually tailor their communications capacity to allow all their VoIP locations to contribute to, and borrow from, a virtual pool of voice trunks that can be shared across their enterprise, across Verizon VoIP service offerings and across national boundaries. The BEST feature is made even more powerful when it is coupled with Verizon Business' centralized multisite, multicountry IP Trunking design option. This provides businesses with the flexibility to implement a centralized IP PBX hub in one European location and to extend VoIP services -- including the enhanced features and benefits of unified communications and collaboration -- to other sites across multiple European countries.

"Verizon Business continues to enhance and expand its VoIP portfolio to make it easier for customers to employ and leverage the benefits of IP communications," said Jim Tyrrell, vice president of marketing for Verizon's global business voice solutions. "Our VoIP portfolio is designed to help customers achieve cost and efficiency benefits as they move away from traditional voice networks to IP-enabled communications solutions -- and most importantly, to give them a series of options that can be tailored to their specific business needs. Our award-winning BEST capability is a good example of how we're helping our customers maximize their technology investments to suit their changing communications needs."

Stuart Curzon, Verizon Business EMEA's group vice president for international sales, said, "Verizon Business constantly works to develop solutions that help its customers achieve their business goals. The ability to do more with less, and make technology work harder, is a holy grail for many CIOs today, and this new capability is just one more way in which we are helping customers realize that aim."

The BEST offering is available immediately in 10 European countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. as well as in the U.S. Availability in the Asia-Pacific region will commence late next year.

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 one of the world's most connected IP networks 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.

SOURCE Verizon Business