READING, England, January 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Assessment Based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

Leading industry analyst firm Gartner Inc. has positioned Verizon
Business in the Leaders quadrant among Pan-European network services
providers in its new report, "Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service
Providers, 2008."(i)

The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant examines network service providers that
"generate at least euro 100 million in enterprise network services revenue
contracted in Europe (not merely revenue for delivery in Europe under
contract from non-European sources)." To qualify, providers had to "offer
voice, data, managed network services and value-added services to enterprise
customers across multiple geographies in Europe."

According to Gartner, providers positioned in the Leaders quadrant "have
a full portfolio of voice and data services, including relatively new
offerings in areas such as application-aware networking, WAN optimization and
hosted communications applications. These services will be delivered with
good quality across a wide area of coverage at competitive prices by account
teams that are typically closer to the customer. Leaders have a strong vision
of the market and their role in it, and they will typically be able to
address a wider range of customers (in terms of size, geography and service
requirements) with their service offerings than others in this Magic
Quadrant."

Nancy Gofus, Verizon senior vice president of global business products,
said: "We believe our position in the Leaders quadrant reflects our ongoing
commitment to the European market, including the ongoing expansion of our
network-based, global solutions portfolio. We have extensive network coverage
throughout Europe, and in the past year have further broadened our solutions
portfolio to accommodate the requirements of our customers, including the
deployment of high-capacity Ethernet services. Our aim is to continue to
deliver unsurpassed global solutions to our multinational customers, while
making it as simple as possible for them to do business with us. We have
therefore also continued to focus on streamlining our customer-facing
processes, and expanding our customer self-service tools, to ensure a
consistent and high quality customer experience wherever our customers work
with us in the world."

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrants are copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and are reused
with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a
marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis
of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as
defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service
depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to
select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic
Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a
specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or
implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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 the world's most connected IP network 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

(i) Gartner Research "Magic Quadrant for Pan-European Network Service
Providers, 2008", December 9, 2008, authors - Neil Rickard and Katja Ruud.
Gartner RAS Core Research Note G00163121