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The story
History
Bell Atlantic mergers and rebrand to Verizon (1983–2002)
In 1983, the US Department of Justice reached a settlement with the original AT&T to break up the Bell System. Bell Atlantic Corporation was created as one of the original "Baby Bell" Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs).
Bell Atlantic's original roster of operating companies included:
The Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania
New Jersey Bell
Diamond State Telephone
C&P Telephone (itself comprising four subsidiaries)
In 1996, CEO and Chairman Raymond W. Smith orchestrated Bell Atlantic's merger with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX, which had received New York Telephone and New England Telephone in the breakup. When it merged, it moved its corporate headquarters from Philadelphia to New York City. NYNEX was consolidated into the Bell Atlantic name by 1997.
In April 2000, two months before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave final approval on the merger with GTE, Bell Atlantic formed Verizon Wireless in a joint venture with the British telecommunications company Vodafone, which owned the mobile operator AirTouch. The companies established Verizon Wireless as its own business operated by Bell Atlantic, which owned 55% of the venture. Vodafone retained 45% of the company. The deal was valued at approximately $70 billion and created a mobile carrier with 23 million customers. Verizon Wireless merged Bell Atlantic's wireless network, Vodafone's AirTouch and PrimeCo holdings, and the wireless division of GTE. Due to its size, Verizon Wireless was able to offer national coverage at competitive rates, giving it an advantage over regional providers typical of the time.
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Bell Atlantic became Verizon Communications in June 2000, when the FCC approved the merger with telephone company GTE, nearly two years after the deal was proposed in July 1998. The merger was announced on April 4. The name Verizon derives from the combination of the words veritas, Latin for truth, and horizon.
The approval came with 25 stipulations to preserve competition between local phone carriers, including investing in new markets and broadband technologies. The new entity was headed by co-CEOs Charles Lee, former CEO of GTE, and Bell Atlantic CEO Ivan Seidenberg.
Verizon became the largest local telephone company in the United States, operating 63 million telephone lines in 40 states. The company also inherited 25 million mobile phone customers. Additionally, Verizon offered internet services and long-distance calling in New York, before expanding long-distance operations to other states.
Approximately 85,000 Verizon workers went on an 18-day labor strike in August 2000 after their union contracts expired. The strike affected quarterly revenues, resulting in Verizon Wireless's postponement of the company's initial public offering (IPO) (the IPO was ultimately cancelled in 2003 because the company no longer needed to raise revenue for Verizon Wireless due to increased profits), and created a backlog of repairs. This strike did not involve all company employees, as most line technicians and user technicians of the company are in a union.
Verizon launched 3G service in 2002, which doubled the Internet speed of the time to 144 kb per second. In August 2002, Verizon began offering local, long-distance, and mobile calling, as well as Internet service, in a bundle. It was initially only available to customers in New York and Massachusetts.
Growth (2003–2010)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added Verizon Communications to its stock market index in April 2004. Verizon replaced telecom competitor AT&T, which had been a part of the index since the Great Depression.
Verizon launched its Fios Internet service, which transmits data over fiber optic cables, in Keller, Texas, in 2004. The company launched Fios TV in September 2005, also in Keller. Twenty percent of qualified homes had signed up by the end of 2004. By January 2006, Fios offered over 350 channels in seven states, including 20 high-definition television channels and video on demand.
Mail servers at Verizon.net were configured in December 2004 to not accept connections from Europe by default in an attempt to reduce spam email that was originating from the region. Individual domains would only be unblocked upon request. The move was criticized by its customers for disrupting their communications without notice, causing them to initiate a class-action lawsuit. Verizon proposed a settlement in April 2006.
Beginning in 2005, Verizon reinforced its focus on its mobile phone, Internet, and TV businesses by selling a number of its U.S.-based wireline-focused businesses and international assets. It sold 700,000 lines in Hawaii in 2005, and spun off lines in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont in January 2007, which were then purchased by FairPoint Communications for $2.72 billion. Verizon also shed its telephone directory business in 2006. In May 2009, the company spun off wirelines in Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin into a company that then merged with Frontier Communications in a deal valued at $8.6 billion. It sold its interests in telecommunications providers in the Dominican Republic (Verizon Dominicana, previously CODETEL), Puerto Rico and Venezuela to América Móvil. A decade later, it would continue moves to invest in wireless. In 2015, American Tower Corp. acquired the exclusive right to lease, acquire or otherwise operate and manage many of Verizon's wireless towers for an upfront payment of $5.1 billion, which also included payment for the sale of approximately 165 towers. Verizon used the funds from this sale to support a $10.4 billion purchase of AWS-3 spectrum licenses at an FCC auction. In 2016, Verizon sold its wireline operations in Texas, Florida, and California to Frontier.
Verizon began negotiations in 2005 to purchase long-distance carrier MCI, who accepted the company's initial $6.75 billion offer in February but then received a higher offer from Qwest Communications. Verizon increased its bid to $7.6 billion, which MCI accepted on March 29, 2005. The acquisition gave the company access to MCI's million corporate clients and international holdings, expanding Verizon's presence into global markets. As a result, Verizon Business was established as a new division to serve the company's business and government customers. The FCC approved the deal on October 31, 2005, valuing it at $8.5 billion. Verizon's 2006 revenues rose by as much as 20% following the purchase.
USA Today reported in May 2006 that Verizon, as well as AT&T and BellSouth, had given the National Security Agency landline phone records following the September 11 attacks. That same month, a $50 billion lawsuit was filed by two lawyers on behalf of all Verizon subscribers for privacy violations and to prevent the company from releasing additional records without consent or warrant. Protesters staged the National Day of Out(R)age due in part to the controversy. In 2007, Verizon stated that it fulfilled only "lawful demands" for information, but also acknowledged surrendering customer information to government agencies without court orders or warrants 720 times between 2005 and 2007.
Verizon won a lawsuit against Vonage for patent infringement in March 2007. The three patents named were filed by Bell Atlantic in 1997, and relate to the conversion of IP addresses into phone numbers, a key technology of Vonage's business. The company was awarded US$58 million in damages and future royalties. Vonage later lost an appeal and was ordered to pay Verizon $120 million.
In May 2007, Verizon acquired CyberTrust, a privately held provider of global information security services.
In September 2007, Verizon Wireless reversed a controversial decision to deny NARAL Pro-Choice America a short code through which the organization could text consumers who had signed up for messaging from the group. The company had initially refused the group access to a code by reserving the right to block "controversial or unsavory" messages.
Verizon opened its networks to third party apps and devices for the first time in 2007, a decision that allowed it to participate in the FCC's 2008 700 MHz auction of "open access" spectrum. During that auction, the company bid $9.4 billion and won the bulk of national and local licenses for airwaves reaching approximately 469 million people. Verizon utilized the increased spectrum for its 4G service.
Verizon acquired Rural Cellular Corp. for $2.7 billion in cash and assumed debt in 2008. That summer, Verizon announced it would purchase wireless carrier Alltel for $28.1 billion. The acquisition included 13 million customers, which allowed Verizon Wireless to surpass AT&T in number of customers and reach new markets in rural areas.
4chan began receiving reports on February 4, 2010, from Verizon Wireless customers that were having difficulties accessing the site's image boards. Administrators of the site found that only traffic on port 80 to the boards.4chan.org domain was affected, leading them to believe the block was intentional. On February 7, 2010, Verizon Wireless confirmed that 4chan.org was "explicitly blocked" after Verizon's security and external experts detected sweep attacks coming from an IP address associated with the 4chan network. Traffic was restored several days later.
The chairmen of Verizon and Google agreed that network neutrality should be defined and limited in August 2010.
In October 2010, Verizon Wireless paid $77.8 million in refunds and FCC penalties for overcharging 15 million customers for data services. The company stated the overcharges were accidental and only amounted to a few dollars per customer.
Verizon introduced its 4G LTE network in 38 markets, as well as airports in seven additional cities in December 2010. The company planned on a three-year continuous expansion of the 4G service.
Expansion of services (2011–2021)
Verizon acquired Terremark, an information technology services company, for $1.4 billion in early 2011.
Ivan Seidenberg retired as Verizon's CEO on August 1, 2011, and was succeeded by Lowell McAdam.
In December 2011, the non-partisan organization Public Campaign criticized Verizon for its tax avoidance procedures after it spent $52.34 million on lobbying while collecting $951 million in tax rebates between 2008 and 2010 and making a profit of $32.5 billion. The same report also criticized Verizon for increasing executive pay by 167% in 2010 for its top five executives while laying off 21,308 workers between 2008 and 2010. However, in its Form 10-K filed with the SEC on February 24, 2012, Verizon reported having paid more than $11.1 billion in taxes (including income, employment and property taxes) from 2009 to 2011. In addition, the company reported in the 10-K that most of the drop in employment since 2008 was due to a voluntary retirement offer.
Verizon purchased Hughes Telematics, a producer of wireless features for automobiles, for $612 million in June 2012 as part of its strategy to expand into new growth areas in its wireless business. The same month, Verizon's E-911 service failed in the aftermath of the June 2012 derecho storm in several northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., with some problems lasting several days. The FCC conducted an investigation and released a report detailing the problems that led to the failure in January 2013. Verizon reported that it had already addressed or was addressing a number of the issues related to the FCC report, including the causes of generator failures, conducting audits of backup systems, and making its monitoring systems less centralized, although the FCC indicated that Verizon still needed to make additional improvements.
The FCC ruled that Verizon must stop charging users an added fee for using 4G smartphones and tablets as Wi-Fi hotspots (known as "tethering"). Verizon had been charging its customers, even those with "unlimited" plans, $20 per month for tethering. As part of the 2012 settlement, Verizon made a voluntary payment of $1.25 million to the U.S. Treasury.
In August 2012, the Department of Justice approved Verizon's purchase of Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum from a consortium of cable companies, including Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, for $3.9 billion. Verizon began expanding its LTE network utilizing these extra airwaves in October 2013.
The Guardian reported it had obtained an order by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and approved by the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that required Verizon to provide the National Security Agency (NSA) with telephone metadata for all calls originating in the U.S. Verizon Wireless was not part of the NSA data collection for wireless accounts due to foreign ownership issues.
Verizon purchased Vodafone's 45% stake in Verizon in September 2013 for $130 billion. The deal closed on February 21, 2014, and became the third largest corporate deal ever signed, giving Verizon Communications sole ownership of Verizon Wireless.
On January 14, 2014, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the FCC's net neutrality rules after Verizon filed suit against them in January 2010. In June 2016, in a 184-page ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld, by a 2–1 vote, the FCC's net neutrality rules and the FCC's determination that broadband access is a public utility rather than a luxury. AT&T and the telecom industry said they would seek to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Verizon received more than 1,000 requests for information about its subscribers on national security grounds via National Security Letters. In total, Verizon received 321,545 requests from federal, state and local law enforcement for U.S. customer information. In May 2015, Verizon agreed to pay $90 million "to settle federal and state investigations into allegations mobile customers were improperly billed for premium text messages".
Verizon Wireless launched the technology news website SugarString in October 2014. The publication attracted controversy after it was reported that its writers were forbidden from publishing articles related to net neutrality or domestic surveillance. Although Verizon denied that this was the case, the site (described as being a pilot project) was shuttered in December.
Verizon acquired AOL in 2015 at $50 per share, for a deal valued around $4.4 billion. The following year, Verizon announced it would acquire the core internet business of Yahoo! for $4.83 billion. Following the completion of the acquisitions, Verizon created a new division called Oath, which includes the AOL and Yahoo brands. The sale did not include Yahoo's stakes in Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan.The integrated AOL-Yahoo operation, housed under the newly created Oath division, would be organized around key content-based pillars.Verizon completed its acquisition of Yahoo for $4.48 billion on June 13, 2017.
In May 2015, cybersecurity researcher Blake Welsh disclosed a flaw in Verizon's systems that left millions of home internet users vulnerable to account information leaks.
In August 2015, Verizon launched Hum, a service and device offering vehicle diagnostic and monitoring tools for vehicles. On August 1, 2016, Verizon announced its acquisition of Fleetmatics, a fleet telematics system company in Dublin, Ireland, for $2.4 billion, to build products that it offers to enterprises for logistics and mobile workforces. On September 12, 2016, Verizon announced its acquisition of Sensity, a startup for LED sensors, in an effort to bolster its IoT portfolio. A few months later, Verizon acquired mapping startup SocialRadar, whose technology would be integrated with MapQuest.
Verizon was accused by Communications Workers of America of deliberately refusing to maintain its copper telephone service in 2016. The organization released internal memos and other documents stating that Verizon workers in Pennsylvania were being instructed to, in areas with network problems, migrate voice-only customers to VoiceLink, a system that delivers telephone service over the Verizon Wireless network, instead of repairing the copper lines. VoiceLink has limitations, including incompatibility with services or devices that require the transmission of data over the telephone line, and a dependency on battery backup in case of power failure. The memo warned that technicians who do not follow this procedure would be subject to "disciplinary action up to and including dismissal". A Verizon spokesperson responded to the allegations, stating that the company's top priority was to restore service to customers as quickly as possible, and that VoiceLink was a means of doing so in the event that larger repairs had to be done to the infrastructure. The spokesperson stated that it was "hard to argue with disciplining someone who intentionally leaves a customer without service".
Verizon was reported to be in talks with Charter Communications in January 2017 to discuss a possible buyout. Charter reportedly rejected the deal around the end of May 2017, citing that the offer was too low for them to accept, and its largest shareholder Liberty Media stated that they were not ready to sell.
Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam in 2017 confirmed the company planned to launch a streaming TV service.
Verizon added to its fiber-optic network and 5G capabilities in February 2017 when it closed its $1.8 billion acquisition of XO Communications' fiber-optic network business. Verizon and Corning Inc. announced a deal in April 2017 whereby Verizon would purchase 12.4 million miles of optical fiber per year from Corning from 2018 through 2020. Months later, Verizon purchased WideOpenWest's fiber-optic assets in the Chicago market for $225 million.
Also in 2017, Verizon was sued by New York City for violating its cable franchise agreement, which required the provider to pass a fiberoptic network to all households in the city by June 30, 2014. Verizon disputed the claims, citing landlords not granting permission to install the equipment on their properties, and an understanding with the government that the fiber network would follow the same routes as its copper lines, and did not necessarily mean it would have to pass the lines in front of every property.
Verizon Connect was created in 2018, combining the individual Telematics, Fleetmatics, and Telogis units.
On December 10, 2018, Verizon announced that 10,400 managers had agreed to leave the company as part of a "voluntary separation program" offered to 44,000 employees, resulting in a cut of around 7% of its workforce. At the same time, the company announced a $4.6 billion write-off on its media division, citing "increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower-than-expected revenues and earning".
Verizon underwent structural and organizational changes from 2018 to 2019. Hans Vestberg succeeded Lowell McAdam as CEO on August 1, 2018. Vestberg's strategy focused on Verizon's 5G technology. In early 2019, Verizon reorganized itself into three new divisions—Consumer, Business and Media.
Verizon began offering anti-spam and robocalling features free of charge to all customers beginning in March 2019.
Verizon began rolling out its 5G mobile network in April 2019; the network was active in 30 cities by the end of the year. Verizon uses millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum as part of its 5G network. While capable of very high speeds, mmWave has limited range and poor building penetration.
On January 14, 2020, Verizon announced the launch of its privacy-focused search engine OneSearch.
2026 FIFA World Cup
In September 2024, Verizon announced they would be a sponsor for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, where they will provide access to their cellular network for visiting fans at stadiums, fan fests, and the metropolitan areas of the host cities.
From Wikipedia’s article on Verizon, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8