[SBE] Verizon says it will do away with traditional phone lines in 7 years

[Gary Stewart]

Got this from our state Cable TV association.

 

January 12, 2009 

 

Verizon Communications Inc., the second-biggest U.S. telephone company,
said it will do away with traditional phone lines within seven years as
it moves to carry all calls over the Internet. 
The company will start offering Internet calls to its FiOS Web and TV
customers in the next couple of months, starting in Maryland, Chief
Marketing Officer John Stratton said at the Consumer Electronics Show in
Las Vegas. By offering so-called voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP,
calls, Verizon is mimicking providers such as Vonage Holdings Corp. and
cable companies, which have won customers with digital plans. An
Internet-based service can be maintained at a fraction of the cost of a
phone network and helps Verizon offer a greater range of services,
Stratton said. "We've built our business over the years with
circuit-switched voice being our bread and butter -- for 100 years
that's been our business -- but increasingly, we are in the business of
selling, basically, data connectivity," Stratton said. "If you think
about it, it's a very, very natural evolution."

Verizon and rivals such as AT&T Inc. are losing home-phone lines as
customers rely on mobile handsets or switch to cable companies that sell
digital call plans as part of a package with Web and TV service. Verizon
lost 3.7 million lines in the third quarter from a year earlier. The
company sells mobile services with Vodafone Group PLC and has rolled out
TV and Web services, including the FiOS fiber-optic network. Verizon
fell 23 cents to $32.16 in New York Stock Exchange trading. The New
York-based company dropped 24 percent in the past year.  Bloomberg News 

 

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