Verizon Business has announced a ramp-up of its Asia Pacific operations with four new senior management appointments and plans to add considerably more diversity into its regional trunk & node network.

The firm has hired Tejinder Sekhon as managing director, South Asia from Orange Business services, reporting to Andrew Dobbins, regional vice president, who himself joined Verizon from Orange in January. Ron Gauci has also joined as managing director, Australia and New Zealand from IBM where he headed global business services.

The other two appointments are Mark Saloyedoff as regional director, professional services and solutions engineering and Rod Hirst, regional sales director—a newly created position.The firm is also revealing an extensive raft of network enhancements at meetings with journalists and analysts in Singapore this week.

Along with the previously announced Trans Pacific Express cable linking North Asia and the US, Verizon is also planning a mesh configuration, designed to boost reliability and redundancy, across its US-Japan route, extending to China, South Korea and Taiwan in 2H 2008. It is also adding a new terrestrial route from China to India.

There are also plans to install diverse MPLS nodes in Shanghai, Mumbai, Bangalore, several Australian cities, Penang and Hanoi as well as new nodes in Hyderabad, Chennai, Jakarta and several Pakistan cities as well as a new IP node in Kuala Lumpur pending agreement with Telekom Malaysia. Backbone networks are also being upgraded: for example, in Australia to 2.5Gbps/10Gbps, Vietnam and Indonesia to 90 Mbps, and China to 2.4 Gbps. It has also applied for national and international long distance licenses in India.

Dobbins told journalists yesterday that the firm was also developing regional peering agreements and additional direct routes such as China to Sweden and Singapore to South Africa.

Verizon considers that it has a total addressable market in Asia Pac of 1,400 local MNCs and 2,400 foreign MNCs. Over the next five years, 40% of regional MNC telecoms spend is expected to originate in Japan, 20% in China, 10% in Australia and 8% in India.The firm’s VP strategy & finance John Doherty put a bullish spin on the prospects for MNC telecoms: on a macro level, changing market dynamics see more business globalisation, economic growth in developing nations and corporate M&A while on a technology level, networks are moving to all IP with a requirement for more mobility and security.