Verizon Business is expanding its range of Ethernet services for business users into a number of new territories in Central and Eastern Europe (C&E Europe), the carrier announced today.

    Verizon Business (formerly MCI in Europe) said its Ethernet Private Line (EPL), a point-to-point Ethernet-over-Sonet/SDH service, is now available in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, as well as other European markets. Speeds up to GigE are supported.

    Businesses in those three C&E Europe markets can now also get the operator's Ethernet Access to Verizon Private IP service, with access bandwidth speeds ranging from 1 Mbit/s to GigE.

    The carrieral so plans to extend its Converged Packet Architecture (CPA), which aggregates legacy and IP services onto the same Ethernet connection, to Europe and Asia/Pacific, and is set to take its multipoint-to-multipoint Ethernet service, the Leading Lights award-winning Virtual Private LAN, international next year.

    The international operator joins a growing list of service providers that have launched, or plan to launch, Ethernet services into the region's emerging markets. Its rival, Orange Business Services , plans to extend its International Ethernet Link service, launched in April this year, to Eastern Europe (particularly Poland) in 2008.

    That trend, which will be covered in a Light Reading Webinar, High-Performance Ethernet Services Opportunities for Central/Eastern Europe, on Wednesday, October 17, is also creating new opportunities for Ethernet systems vendors.