|
Verizon's
Open Network Seen as Boon for Mobile Advertising, but some observers
say it will only compound confusion. November 27, 2007.
SAN
FRANCISCO - Verizon called its decision to open its network to all
comers a "transformation point in the 20-year history of
mass-market wireless devices." Even if it doesn't live up to that
billing, marketers and media companies expect it will be a big boon to
those who want to see your cellphone become an ad-carrying device.
'Really smart move'
"It's great for advertisers," said Eric Bader, managing
director, Band in Hand, a mobile-marketing consultancy whose clients
include Procter & Gamble. "Ad buys on Verizon have just
exploded to a much bigger universe. It's a really smart move."
Others, like Tony Nethercutt, VP-worldwide sales, AdMob, said an open
mobile ecosystem will make it easier for marketers to participate in
the new digital platform. It will be "easier for mobile-content
and -applications folks, and easier for advertisers to
participate," he said.
Verizon, the nation's No. 2 carrier with 63.7 million subscribers,
Tuesday announced it will allow any device or any application on its
phones. There are caveats, though. All new devices will have to meet a
minimal set of technical standards to be determined by Verizon, and
device providers will be responsible for testing fees. Also, it's
unclear whether other carriers will be opening their doors to any and
all comers.
In a statement issued by Verizon Wireless, President-CEO Lowell McAdam
called the move "a transformation point in the 20-year history of
mass-market wireless devices -- one which we believe will set the
table for the next level of innovation and growth."
Huge growth expected
Marketers spent an estimated $3 billion on mobile marketing this year
with projections of growth to $19 billion in 2011, according to ABI
research.
Not everyone is in agreement on how much the Verizon decision will
propel mobile marketing, however. Roger Entner, senior
VP-communications sector at IAG Research, said one of the things
stifling advertising on mobile phones is actually the multitude of
phones and applications on the market, requiring numerous permeations
of every campaign for different devices on different carriers.
Verizon's decision may compound the problem. "Be careful what you
wish for, you might get it," he cautioned.
Alice
Z. Cuneo http://adage.com/digital/article
Verizon Scores Coveted 'Gossip Girl' Integration Deal
- October 18, 2007
Four Carriers Battled to Win Role in Show's
Cellphone-Heavy Plot
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Toothy trust-fund babies claw their way to the
top of the social set in CW's "Gossip Girl." But in real
life, it's marketers that fought to get their mobile devices into the
hands of the teen cast.
Leighton Meester stars as Blair Waldorf in CW's 'Gossip Girl.'
(Her co-star, the EnV, is also on the bed.)
Verizon Wireless won a four-way scrum among the nation's biggest
telecommunications marketers - Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T - to
nab its multimillion-dollar role in "Gossip Girl."
Reluctant to talk
Since admitting to one's desire to be in with the in-crowd is
unseemly, those who didn't get invited to the party were
understandably reluctant to talk about it. AT&T's wireless unit
looks at a "variety of opportunities," said a spokesman,
while T-Mobile said it "had no information" about looking at
"Gossip Girl." Sprint executives were unavailable to
comment. The winner, naturally, was gracious in victory. "I can
understand there being an appetite for a partnership with 'Gossip
Girl,'" said Lou Rossi, Verizon Wireless' director-media and
sponsorships.
So will viewers. The wealthy Manhattan teens at the center of
"Gossip Girl" routinely use Verizon Wireless phones to talk
to friends, send text messages, and even locate a seedy gambling den.
Each character has his or her own phone, with Serena van der Woodsen
-- the show's queen bee -- using a blue LG Chocolate 2.0; rival Blair
Waldorf makes do with an orange EnV. Serena's not-so-well-to-do
suitor, Dan Humphrey, sports a Motorola Krzr.
Where placing a can of soda on a table or a cellphone in a character's
hand might have sufficed for a brand-integration deal in the past,
advertisers, networks and studios are now constructing more complex,
intricate deals in which appearances of products on-screen are simply
one element of a much larger effort. One reason "Gossip
Girl" placement was so desirable was the depth of marketing
tie-ins the show afforded. Verizon Wireless phones offer exclusive
"Gossip Girl" content and the company sponsors a website
related to the show where surfers can download ring tones of songs
that appear on the show.
Boon for show, too
But it's not just Verizon Wireless that gets a marketing opportunity
out of the deal. "Gossip Girl" is hoping its tie-in with the
cellphone company will bring in viewers to its show. Verizon Wireless
efforts on behalf of the show include national print ads and even
guerrilla-marketing "street teams." The level of marketing
support provided to the show was a critical factor in deciding whose
products to use, said Alison Tarrant, CW's senior VP-integrated sales
and marketing.
With technology allowing more and more consumers to watch TV shows on
the web or mobile devices, finding new ways to get the word out about
new programs is important. "The integrated partnerships overall
are vital to our business at this point, for all the obvious
reasons," said Sonia Borris, VP-marketing and promotions, Warner
Bros. Worldwide Television Marketing. "There's a desire to
provide the extensions that will help market the show, and ultimately
those are distribution outlets that both networks and studios can't
necessarily afford. We need to utilize our partners' media assets in
order to generate buzz and additional marketing support."
'Gossip Girl' executive producer and co-creator Stephanie Savage:
'We would rather not have our shows be full of fake things.'
Rather than filling a set with name-brand goods, "why not use
that opportunity as a way to connect to the appropriate brand that's
going to give you marketing support and is going to reflect on the
show?" asked John Zamoiski, co-CEO of NMA Entertainment &
Marketing, a Los Angeles firm that creates such alliances. More
networks and studios are "looking for long-term impact, instead
of what might be a short-term paycheck."
The show's backers had a telecom marketer in mind early in the
program's development. An initial script even had T-Mobile's
"Sidekick" in its pages, said Stephanie Savage, the show's
executive producer and co-creator. Showing mobile devices is
"very easy to do, because it's all stuff we wanted [characters]
to do anyway," she said. "We would rather not have our shows
be full of fake things."
Nor would telecom marketers -- so long as the show lures the right
consumers. The wireless market is a mature one, and wireless companies
are focused more on retaining their customers and getting them to buy
additional services, said Linda Barrabee, an analyst at Boston
technology consultant Yankee Group. Teens adopt the services quickly
and help influence parents' buying decisions, she said. As a result,
the carriers "like to establish these exclusive relationships
around content that they perceive to be hot and appeals to a segment
that is important to them."
http://adage.com/madisonandvine/article.php?article_id=121256
Brian
Steinberg
Verizon Communications, Inc.
(NYSE:
VZ) is an American broadband and telecommunications company and a component of the Dow 30. It was formed in 2000 when Bell Atlantic, one of the Regional Bell Operating Companies, merged with GTE, formerly the largest independent local exchange telephone company in the United States. Prior to its transformation into Verizon, Bell Atlantic had merged with another Regional Bell Operating Company, NYNEX, in 1997. The name is a portmanteau of veritas and horizon.
History
Verizon was founded in 1983 as Bell Atlantic Corporation. It inherited seven Bell Operating Companies from American Telephone & Telegraph following its breakup. Bell Atlantic's original roster of operating companies included:
The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
New Jersey Bell Telephone Company Telephone Company
The Diamond State Telephone Company
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of West Virginia
Bell Atlantic originally operated in the U.S. states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, as well as Washington, D.C.
In 1994, Bell Atlantic became the first RBOC to entirely drop the original names of its original operating companies. Ameritech and NYNEX (and SBC Communications in 2002) simply added d/b/a names to its operating companies; U S West and BellSouth had merged their operating companies. Operating company titles were simplified to:
Bell Atlantic logo, 1984–1997.
Bell Atlantic logo, 1997–2000.Bell Atlantic—Delaware, Inc.
Bell Atlantic—Maryland, Inc.
Bell Atlantic—New Jersey, Inc.
Bell Atlantic—Pennsylvania, Inc.
Bell Atlantic—Virginia, Inc.
Bell Atlantic—Washington,
D.C., Inc.
Bell Atlantic—West Virginia, Inc.
In 1996, CEO and Chairman Raymond W. Smith orchestrated Bell Atlantic's merger with NYNEX. When it merged, it moved its corporate headquarters from Philadelphia to New York City. NYNEX was consolidated into this name by 1997.
Prior to its merger with GTE, Bell Atlantic traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the "BEL" symbol.
GTE Merger
Bell Atlantic acquired GTE on June 30, 2000 and changed its name to Verizon Communications, Inc. It was among the largest mergers in United States business history. It was the result of a definitive merger agreement, dated July 27, 1998, between Bell Atlantic, based in New York City since the merger with NYNEX in 1996, and GTE, which was in the process of moving its headquarters from Stamford, Connecticut, to Irving, Texas.
The Bell Atlantic–GTE merger, priced at more than $52 billion at the time of the announcement, closed nearly two years later, following analysis and approvals by Bell Atlantic and GTE shareowners, 27 state regulatory commissions and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and clearance from the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) and various international agencies.
The merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, to form Verizon Communications, became effective on June 30, 2000, with an exchange ratio of 1.22 shares of Verizon Communications Common Stock for each share of GTE Common Stock owned. Fractional shares resulting from the exchange of GTE stock into Verizon Communications shares were sold at a price of $55.00 per share. Verizon began trading on the NYSE under its new "VZ" symbol on Monday, July 3, 2000.
Meanwhile, on September 21, 1999, Bell Atlantic and UK-based Vodafone AirTouch Plc (now Vodafone Group Plc) announced that they had agreed to create a new wireless business with a national footprint, a single brand and a common digital technology – composed of Bell Atlantic's and Vodafone's U.S. wireless assets (Bell Atlantic Mobile (which was previously called Bell Atlantic-NYNEX Mobile by 1997), AirTouch Cellular, PrimeCo Personal Communications, and AirTouch Paging). This wireless joint venture received regulatory approval in six months, and began operations as Verizon Wireless on April 4, 2000, kicking off the new "Verizon" brand name. GTE's wireless operations became part of Verizon Wireless – creating what was initially the nation's largest wireless company before Cingular Wireless acquired AT&T Wireless in 2004 – when the Bell Atlantic–GTE merger closed nearly three months later. Verizon then became the majority owner (55%) of Verizon Wireless.
Genuity was formerly the Internet division of GTE Corp and spun off in
2000. Level 3 Communications acquired the bankrupt ISP in 2002 for only $137 million; a bargain-basement price considering the $616 million that a pre-Bell Atlantic-merger GTE paid for Genuity (then BBN Planet) in
1997.
Merger effects
Note this section refers to land lines only, as Verizon Wireless operates nationwide.
Verizon shares were made a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average on April 8,
2004. Verizon currently has 140.3 million land lines in service. With the MCI merger, it has more than 250,000 employees. Verizon serves customers throughout much of the United States. The primary states that it provides service to include:
Southwestern Connecticut
Delaware
Maine*
Maryland
Massachusetts*
New Hampshire*
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania**
Rhode Island*
Vermont*
Virginia**
West Virginia
Washington, D.C.
These states are served by the following renamed Bell Operating Companies:
Verizon Delaware, Inc. – Also serves a portion of southeastern Pennsylvania
Verizon Maryland, Inc.
Verizon New England Telephone & Telegraph, Inc. – noted with a (*)
Verizon New Jersey, Inc.
Verizon New York Telephone, Inc. – Also serves Southwestern Connecticut
Verizon Pennsylvania, Inc.
Verizon Virginia, Inc.
Verizon Washington, D.C., Inc.
Verizon West Virginia, Inc.
(**) Also served by GTE operating companies (refer below)
It also provides service to secondary markets (mostly from its acquisition of GTE) in:
Arizona*****
California****, *****
Florida
Idaho****
Illinois**
Indiana***
Michigan***
Nevada*****
North Carolina*
Ohio**
Oregon****
Puerto Rico
South Carolina*
Texas
Washington****
Wisconsin**
These states are served by these operating companies:
GTE Southwest, Inc. dba Verizon Southwest,Inc., which serves only Texas.
GTE Florida, Inc. dba Verizon Florida, Inc.
Verizon South, Inc. (marked with a *)
Verizon North, Inc. (marked with a **)
Contel of the South, Inc. dba Verizon Mid-States, Inc. (marked with a ***) Also served by Verizon North.
Verizon Northwest, Inc.(marked with a ****) Operations in California do business as "Verizon West Coast, Inc."
Verizon California, Inc. (marked with a *****)
Due to the rigorous climate and high costs, GTE Alaska was sold to Alaska Power and Telephone Company rather than be merged with Verizon.
Verizon also owns stakes in some international communications companies, most notably 23.14% of Vodafone Italy. On April 3, 2006 Verizon agreed to sell its stakes in Verizon Dominicana (operating in the Dominican Republic), CANTV of Venezuela, and Puerto Rico Telephone Company, Inc. (PRT) in Puerto Rico to Telmex and América Móvil for $3.7
billion. Verizon's other international investment is 50% ownership of Gibraltar NYNEX Communications.
In 2002, Verizon sold GTE's former telephone operations in 3 states: Missouri and Alabama operations were sold to CenturyTel, and Kentucky operations were sold to Alltel, which later spun off its landline operations as Windstream. In 2005, Verizon sold off GTE's former telephone operations in Hawaii to The Carlyle Group, This operation is now known as Hawaiian Telcom. As of January 16, 2007, Verizon's operations in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are going to be split off into a new Bell Operating Company, spun off, and merged with FairPoint Communications.
In 2006 Verizon moved its headquarters from New York City to Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
MCI acquisition
MCI logo, 2003-2006On February 14, 2005, Verizon agreed to acquire MCI, formerly WorldCom, after SBC Communications agreed to acquire AT&T just a few weeks earlier.
Media coverage has focused on several ways in which that acquisition, once completed, would benefit Verizon, including economies of scale derived from a potential productivity boost to be achieved via the elimination of thousands of jobs at the combined company, and access to the large base of business customers currently served by MCI. The real benefit to Verizon was the acquisition of long-haul lines. The bulk of Verizon's business is concentrated in the eastern United States. This not only renders the company, effectively, a regional phone company, but also forces it to pay usage fees to long-haul carriers, such as former MCI, to complete calls for its customers whenever those calls go outside the Verizon "footprint". That need is obviated by the MCI acquisition and was key in the long term market position strategy. By January 6, 2006, MCI was incorporated into Verizon with the name Verizon Business. With this merger, Verizon also acquired the naming rights to the Washington, D.C. home of the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals, the Verizon Center (formerly known as the MCI Center). Just prior to the acquisition, MCI had purchased an internet services company, Totality.
Verizon, with MCI, was the largest telecommunications company in the United States based on sales of $75.11 billion, profits of $7.4 billion and assets of $168.13 billion. After completion of the BellSouth/AT&T merger, AT&T became the largest telecommunications company in the world in terms of assets and
profits.
|
Rank
|
Company
|
Sales
|
Profits
|
Assets
|
Market
Value
|
|
25
|
Verizon
Communications
|
75.11
|
7.40
|
168.13
|
93.18
|
|
49
|
AT&T
|
43.86
|
4.79
|
145.63
|
107.04
|
|
131
|
BellSouth
|
20.55
|
3.29
|
56.55
|
57.82
|
|
|
Merged
|
64.41
|
8.08
|
202.18
|
164.86
|
Controversies
Verizon has been involved in various public controversies.
On December 22, 2004, mail servers at Verizon.net were configured not to accept connections from Europe, by default, in an attempt to reduce spam email. Individual domains would only be unblocked upon request.
On May 11, 2006, controversy arose when USA Today revealed that Verizon, along with
AT&T and BellSouth, had turned over the call records of millions of U.S. citizens to the National Security Agency. Verizon flatly denied turning over records to the government, but did not comment on whether MCI, which it had acquired in January, had done so.
On October 12, 2007 the company admitted in a letter to the United States House Committee on Energy and Commerce that it had turned over customer information to the FBI and other federal agencies of the U.S. government approximately 94,000 times from January 2005 to September 2007, providing such information 720 times without being presented with a court order or
warrant.
In September of 2007, Verizon Wireless initially refused to make their mobile phone network available to NARAL Pro-Choice America for a program which allows people to sign up for pro-choice text messages, on the grounds that they had the right to block "controversial or unsavory" messages. They subsequently reversed the decision, saying "It was an incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy, that ... was designed to ward against communications such as anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children." and that Verizon has "great respect for this free flow of ideas."
Verizon services
Voice
Verizon provides several different types of land line services - standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) service as well as VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) and optical fiber line services. In addition, Verizon offers long distance services. Verizon also offers a product that is a joint venture with Microsoft called "Verizon Web Calling", a type of VoIP service used within Windows Live Messenger.
Verizon VoiceWing
Verizon VoiceWing is a Voice over IP (VoIP) service offered by Verizon that offers phone service over a broadband Internet connection. A DSL, cable, or Verizon FiOS Internet connection, a regular telephone, a router, and a telephone adaptor are required for service.
Video
Verizon launched its FiOS Video service in Keller, Texas on September 22, 2005. FiOS
TV uses an optical fiber network to deliver more than 330 total channels, more than 180 digital video and music channels more than 20 high-definition channels, and 1,800 video-on-demand titles.Verizon also provides DIRECTV service as well.
Data
Verizon provides DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) Internet service in many areas where it offers phone service. See Verizon Online DSL.
Verizon recently began offering FTTP (Fiber to the Premises, or Fiber to the Home) to some subscribers. Verizon calls this
"FiOS Internet".
According to the non-profit spam monitoring organization Spamhaus, Verizon has the largest number of known spammers of all networks worldwide (as of August 2,
2007).
Directory operations
The Yellow Pages business of Verizon known as SuperPages, and is a Texas-based sales, publishing and related services with 1,200 directory titles and a circulation of about 121 million copies in 41 states. The web site receives approximately 17 million visitors a month. It had an operating revenue of $3.6 billion in 2004 and employs 7,300
nationwide. In a move to leverage against higher traffic sites, Superpages linked up with Google to provide search advertising services to its millions of listed businesses. SuperPages will offer its advertisers the ability to bid for Google search
terms.
With an estimated $17 billion in assets, Verizon has spun-off the business unit to finance its expansion in wireless and high-speed Internet
services. Verizon would not be the first Baby Bell to rid itself of its directory publishing operations; Qwest sold off its QwestDex directory services to become Dex Media, and Illinois Bell, now known as AT&T, sold its directory operations to R. H. Donnelley in 1990 ("AT&T Yellow Pages published by R. H. Donnelley").
Corporate governance
Current members of the board of directors of Verizon Communications are, James Barker, James Foucault, Richard Carrión, Robert Lane, Sandra Moose, Joseph Neubauer, Thomas O'Brien, Hugh Price, Ivan Seidenberg, Walter Shipley, John R. Stafford, and Robert
Storey.
Verizon's competitors
Cellular service
Alltel
AT&T
MetroPCS
Sprint Nextel
T-Mobile
Broadband
AT&T
Cablevision
Comcast
Embarq
Qwest
RCN
Time Warner Cable
Insight Communications
Television
Comcast
DirecTV
Time Warner Cable
Dish Network
Charter Communications
Cox Communications
Cablevision
RCN
Insight Communications
Literary References
On the first page of Stephen King's novel Cell, about a wildfire of murderous insanity spread by cellphones, King quotes the famous line from the Verizon Wireless TV ad campaign: "Can you hear me now?"
LINKS
and REFERENCE
-
The
current company named Verizon was founded in 1983 as RBOC Bell
Atlantic. This company purchased GTE in 2000, changing its name to
Verizon Communications.
-
Verizon
Communications Investor Quarterly 4Q2006, Verizon
Communications, http://investor.verizon.com/financial/quarterly/vz/4Q2006/4Q2006.PDF>
-
Haley,
Colin C.. "Genuity
Jilted by Verizon, Mulls Options", Internet.com
-
Pappalardo,
Denise. "Changes
afoot for Genuity customers", Network World
-
Isadore,
Chris. "AT&T,
Kodak, IP out of Dow", CNN/Money, 1 April 2004.
-
Verizon
to sell off Latin units
-
The
Forbes 2000
-
Verizon
persists with European email blockade, John Leyden,
-
Public
Hearings Sought in Phone Record Scandal, William Fisher,
Inter Press Service
-
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/10/verizon_surveillance.html
-
Verizon
Reverses Itself on Abortion Rights Messages, Adam Liptak, New
York Times
-
Verizon
FiOS TV: FiOS TV. Retrieved on February 12, 2006.
-
Verizon
FiOS: FiOS for Home. Retrieved on September 6, 2005.
-
Spamhaus
Statistics: The Top 10. Retrieved on August 2, 2007.
-
"Verizon
may sell $17 billion directory services", Billings
Gazette
-
"Verizon
online directory in ad deal with Google", Reuters
-
Ranii,
David. "Donnelley
likely to pass on Verizon directories", The News &
Observer
-
Official
site
-
Verizon
VoiceWing - Official site
-
Verizon
Wireless
-
Verizon
Business
-
A
History of Verizon Communications
-
My
Home 2.0 - Reality series powered by FiOS
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