Verizon expands wholesale portal

Verizon Business today announced enhancements to the Web portal it offers its wholesale customers that the company said should speed up service delivery as well as cut Verizon’s costs.

The Portfolio portal today features a Price Quote system and a Data Order Management system, as well as an Advanced Reporting Tool, which enables order tracking. The enhancements tie the systems together so wholesale customers can now get a price quote and order a private line or metro private line in a single process and then track the progress via ART.

“This can reduce service intervals because the information for the order feeds right into our system,” said Mike Yancey, director of wholesale voice product management at Verizon Business. “We are not committing to a faster interval rate, but it should be there.”

The service is available at no extra charge to existing wholesale customers that have negotiated a contract rate with Verizon.

More than likely, it will be the small to mid-sized wholesale customers that take advantage of the new enhancements, Yancey said. Larger wholesale customers are mostly still served by more customized systems that do not yet have the Application Programming Interfaces to be directly connected into the ordering system.