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 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 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.

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 SIP connectivity into their equipment, minimizing customer premises equipment 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.

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.