Verizon Business has received approval from the government of India’s Department of Telecommunications to operate its two international gateways in Mumbai and Chennai, under its international long-distance license.

The approval allows Verizon Business to offer its suite of private line services to multinational customers and to activate the company’s wholly owned submarine cable capacity to India, providing direct connections to Verizon’s global network.

International gateways are transmission devices and switches that enable telecom companies to carry international communications traffic across country borders. By operating its own gateways in India, Verizon Business said that it will retain full control of its international network capacity into and out of India and of its global private IP and private line services.

Verizon Business added that the gateway approval also gives the opportunity to maximize its investment in the 20,000km southeast Asia-Middle East-western Europe-4 undersea cable network and other submarine cables including the Europe India Gateway, currently under construction, from the UK to India.

Yali Liu, director of Asia-Pacific network planning for Verizon Business, said: Receiving the international gateway clearance is a major milestone for Verizon Business in India. We worked diligently on this gateway project so we could offer our customers more products and services. The services we offer on our network will help our customers meet their critical communications needs in India and their offices worldwide.