Verizon Business plays its global card with London Hub upgrade

• Verizon continues its push to do business outside the US
• Its Business arm has unveiled the upgraded London Hub, which showcases 5G innovation
• Demos revolve around technology capabilities to transform video conferencing, manufacturing and retail
• The telco plays the ‘global presence’ card when pitching to potential EMEA customers
• Verizon is a ‘good fit’ for multinational companies, according to an industry analyst

LONDON – Verizon Business has opened the doors to its newfangled London Hub in a bid to attract new enterprise customers from beyond its domestic US market, by highlighting its 5G capabilities and claiming to be one of the “very few” truly global telco players.

The company, which is the enterprise-focused arm of US telco giant Verizon, hosted analysts and the media at its central London offices recently to demonstrate what it has been tinkering with since July 2022, when it unveiled plans to revamp what was previously known as its ‘5G London Lab’ – see Verizon to upgrade London 5G lab as it plots bigger private networks push.

Apart from upsizing, Verizon has been adding new 5G solutions that are available for customers to explore within a “customisable, modular space”. Sporting multi-camera setups and integration with its video conferencing tool BlueJeans, the facility is set to enable live events with remote participants, as well as allow visitors to try out demonstrations suitable for the manufacturing and retail industries.

In one example, the company showcased how its 5G network can use computer vision at a manufacturing plant to identify specific details about a product, such as its origin and type. And by using an extended reality (XR) headset, an operator of the manufacturing equipment (a conveyor belt) was able to view instructions in a virtual setting and control processes remotely (see picture below).

In other two demonstrations, Verizon showed how its technology can be used in retail scenarios, such as streaming fashion shows remotely (something that UK fashion house Burberry has already signed up for) and delivering tailored shopping experiences to customers from a distance (see picture below). James Hughes, chief technology officer for Verizon Business’ global retail and hospitality practices, told TelecomTV that Verizon has signed up half of the top-10 global luxury companies, in Italy, France, the UK and the US, and has connected their stores globally.

During the event, Verizon also showcased video conferencing tool BlueJeans, which it acquired in 2020. Joe McStravick, managing director of sales for BlueJeans by Verizon in the EMEA and APAC regions, told TelecomTV that the video platform has been upgraded to include event and webinar software for TV-quality broadcasts, as well as a studio with live-streaming production tools to support events. In Europe, BlueJeans solutions were used for the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 and for UK-based football club Brentford’s fan forum where Verizon provided immersive experiences for fans.

Global vision

Massimo Peselli, chief revenue officer for global enterprise and public sector at Verizon Business (pictured, above), was bullish about the company’s opportunities in the EMEA region.

“There are very few companies left that can call themselves global in our industry. I claim that Verizon is probably the most global carrier platform. And why? We have not just global presence, we have global assets, we have global solutions, but more importantly – everything we do, every process we have is global and has been global for more than 20 years,” he noted during the event in London, adding that the operator’s focus outside the US is, in fact, multinational companies.

Highlighting the global quality of innovation itself, he claimed that innovation is driven by companies and people “who really want to be the first in embracing technologies to create differentiation” and that requires scale. “What we do in locations like this [London] is we capture innovation and we scale innovation throughout the globe,” he explained, describing the hub as “a global platform to innovate” rather than “just a demo centre.”

He added that a lot of the showcases at the London Hub are “in production today or about to be in production”. In many instances, Peselli explained, innovation was started in the UK and then later exported to the US (such as with an undisclosed healthcare deal, as well as with the deployment of a private 5G network at one of the UK’s busiest ports – see What’s up with… Verizon Business & Nokia, Airtel Africa, MATRIXX Software). And the model works the other way too: Peselli said that “some innovation” in manufacturing developed in the US has been brought to the UK-based hub.

According to David Molony, principal analyst at telecom and tech research house Omdia, Verizon was “careful to show that the innovation centre fits the global picture”. Molony noted that it was “interesting they had execs and directors representing their customers in Asia-Pacific and the United States, as well as EMEA. For large enterprise and MNC [multinational corporation] customers it helps to be able to highlight a regional-to-global approach.”

Molony cited data from Omdia’s contracts tracker, which shows that Verizon Business, alongside Orange Business, Telefónica and Vodafone, is “making the running in private 5G network deployments, for example.”

Omdia’s principal analyst for private networks, Pablo Tomasi, said: “Verizon sees private 5G as a growth enabler and, in fact, announced its strategy to pursue private 5G opportunities internationally in 2020 with a focus on EMEA and APAC. Opening a dedicated hub for the EMEA region is the next step in pursuing this regional opportunity. 

“Verizon will be a good fit for those clients that are truly multinational and that need a telco able to support them across a wide global footprint. Verizon’s focus on security is also a key asset it should leverage as a differentiator,” he added.

- Yanitsa Boyadzhieva, Deputy Editor, TelecomTV