The growth of wireless and video services is helping fuel double-digit global network growth for Verizon Business, now the backbone network provider for both Verizon’s FiOS video services and Verizon Wireless, Fred Briggs, executive vice president of network operations and technology said Wednesday.

“It is a really significant part of our overall backbone business,” Briggs said at an interview at the NXTcomm trade show in Chicago. “We also are seeing a lot of enterprise growth in IP.”

As a result, Verizon has significantly accelerated its schedule for key network upgrades, including deployment of optical cross-connects in the Pacific segment of its global network, Briggs said.

“We have had them in the Atlantic,” he said. “Because of the concern with latency, and having predictable latency, we are moving them into the Pacific earlier than we planned. We have decided to move away from Sonet rings and we will use optical mesh to do restoration.”

The optical cross-connect deployment should be complete in the U.S. by year’s end and in the Pacific by mid-2008, he said.

The company has an RFP out for a multi-services edge device that can handle Ethernet, Frame Relay, ATM and IP, Briggs said, and will make its vendor selection in the third quarter. That device will enable the company to converge services at the edge of the network for its Converged Packet Access network.

Verizon Business also will move quickly with its ROADM deployment, now that it has named Tellabs as its vendor, Briggs said. That deployment is part of the company’s initiative to have 100% availability and automated flow-through provisioning of services.

The company is seeing growing demand for some key managed services as well, such as security and emergency notification, as part of business continuity, said Nancy Gofus, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Business.

Through its partnership with Verizon Wireless, the company is rolling out fixed mobile convergence services, and will continue to build on that portfolio, Gofus said. Under Verizon’s new structure, new product development is centralized under John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer.