US-based phone operator Verizon Communications’ corporate venturing unit has joined a consortium providing $9.5m to Cenx, a US-based provider of internet connections.
Alongside Verizon Investments, an affiliate of Verizon Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm for Verizon, in Cenx’s round as a new investor was Mesirow Financial Private Equity. They joined Cenx’s existing investors, venture capital firms DCM and Highland Capital Partners and Wasatch, which also participated in the investment.
DCM and Highland led the undisclosed raising for Cenx in 2009, according to an interview in news provider Heavy Reading.
Daniel Keoppel, executive director at Verizon Ventures, said: “The telecommunications industry is in a massive transition from TDM [time-division multiplexing] to ethernet/IP [internet protocol]-based networks and services.
“This raises significant operational opportunities to be served by new ethernet/IP-centric telecom systems, processes and services.”
In 2010, Verizon and Cenx won the Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award for their implementation of carrier ethernet exchanges.