NEW YORK CITY -- Vodafone unveiled its new East Coast Customer Experience Center (CEC) in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday.

Situated on the eighth floor of a Lexington Avenue high-rise -- inside Vodafone's existing open-plan New York offices -- the CEC is designed to show off what the operator is doing for, and with, its US and global customers, says Vodafone Americas president, Chuck Pol.

"900 of the 1,700 global customers we service are here," says Pol. "A lot of customers are based on the east coast."

As well as customers, Pol says, the North East US coast provides a large "talent pool" for Vodafone to tap into, says Pol. In addition, the time zone means that the carrier can easily connect with facilities in Europe and on the Pacific coast of the US.

Get a quick glimpse of the CEC below by clicking on the image below:

Figure 1: Welcome to the NYC CEC On Wednesday, Vodafone unveiled its NYC-based customer experience center, where it will show off the projects and innovations that it will work on. More than 200 customers were invited to the launch party.

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Vodafone, meanwhile, is expanding in the US. It is working on both fixed and mobile options for its stateside and international customers.

Vodafone has been developing its MPLS-based IP-VPN network reach in the US, for instance: The operator now has 33 points of presence (PoPs) in the US and Canada. These PoPs are available to customers today and were selected for their proximity to Vodafone's major enterprise customer sites, large populations and data center locations, including New York, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Toronto.

Dean McCotter, head of products for Vodafone Americas, tells Light Reading that it plotted out the best location and colocation opportunities by mapping out the locations of 894 Vodafone Global Enterprise (VGE) customers in North America.

Vodafone is also getting ready to go mobile in the US again after selling its Verizon Wireless stake in 2013. Vodafone Americas intends to offer wireless for its business customers through T-Mobile US Inc. in the fall. (See Vodafone to Ride T-Mobile Back Into US.)

— Dan Jones, Mobile Editor, Light Reading