Verizon, Inc.

Verizon's Headquarters in New York City

**Verizon, Inc.** (formerly **Verizon Communications**) is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is based at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but is incorporated in Delaware.

In 1984, the Justice Department of the United States mandated AT&T Corporation to break up the Bell System and split into seven companies, called "Baby Bells". One of the baby bells, **Bell Atlantic**, came into existence in 1984 consisting of the separate operating companies New Jersey Bell, Bell of Pennsylvania, Diamond State Telephone, and C&P Telephone, with a footprint from New Jersey to Virginia. This company would later become Verizon.

As part of a rebranding of the Baby Bells in the mid-1990s, all of Bell Atlantic's operating companies assumed the holding company's name. In 1997, Bell Atlantic expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. Although Bell Atlantic was the surviving company name, the merged company moved its headquarters from Philadelphia to NYNEX's old headquarters in New York City. In 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE, which operated telecommunications companies across most of the rest of the country that was not already in Bell Atlantic's footprint. Bell Atlantic, the surviving entity, changed its name to "Verizon", a portmanteau of *veritas* (Latin for "truth") and *horizon*.

In 2015, Verizon expanded its business into content ownership by acquiring AOL, and two years later it acquired Yahoo!. AOL and Yahoo were amalgamated into a new division named Oath Inc., which was renamed Verizon Media in January 2019. In April 2020, Verizon accquired both CBS Corporation and Viacom, making Verizon the parent company of each of their reunified assets, including the Paramount Pictures film studio, the CBS and The CW (with AT&T's WarnerMedia) broadcast networks, basic-cable networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon, the premium-cable network Showtime, and the publishing company Simon & Schuster.

As of 2016, Verizon is one of three remaining companies that had their roots in the former Baby Bells. The other two, like Verizon, exist as a result of mergers among fellow former Baby Bell members. SBC Communications, bought out the Bells' former parent AT&T Corporation, and assumed the AT&T name. CenturyLink was formed initially in 2011 by the acquisition of Qwest (formerly named US West).

Verizon's subsidiary Verizon Wireless is the largest U.S. wireless communications service provider as of September 2014, with 147 million mobile customers. And as of 2017, Verizon is the only publicly-traded telecommunications company to have two stock listings in its home country, both the NYSE (principal) and NASDAQ (secondary). As of 2017, it is also the second largest telecommunications company by revenue after AT&T.

## History

### Bell Atlantic (1983-2000)

**Bell Atlantic Corporation** was created as one of the original Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) in 1984, during the breakup of the Bell System. 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)

Bell Atlantic originally operated in the states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia, as well as Washington, DC.

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.

### Acquisition of GTE (2000–2002)

Bell Atlantic changed its name to Verizon Communications in June 2000 when the Federal Communications Commission approved a US$64.7 billion acquisition of telephone company GTE, nearly two years after the deal was proposed in July 1998. 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, formerly the CEO of GTE, and Bell Atlantic CEO Ivan Seidenberg.

Upon the acquisition, 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.

The name Verizon derives from the combination of the words Veritas, Latin for truth, and horizon. The name was chosen from 8,500 candidates and the company spent $300 million on marketing the new brand.

Two months before the FCC gave final approval on the formation of Verizon Communications, Bell Atlantic formed Verizon Wireless in a joint venture with the British telecommunications company Vodafone in April 2000.

During its first operational year, Verizon Wireless released Mobile Web, an Internet service that allowed customers to access partner sites such as E\*Trade, ABC News, ESPN, Amazon.com, Ticketmaster and MSN, as well as the "New Every Two" program, which gave customers a free phone with every two-year service contract. In another partnership with MSN in 2002, Verizon Wireless launched the mobile content service "VZW with MSN" and a phone that utilized the Microsoft Windows operating system.

In August 2000, approximately 85,000 Verizon workers went on an 18-day labor strike after their union contracts expired. The strike affected quarterly revenues, resulting in Verizon Wireless' postponement of the company's 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.

Verizon launched 3G service in 2002, which doubled the Internet speeds of the time to 144kb a 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.

### 2011-present

On January 27, 2011, Verizon acquired Terremark, an information technology services company for $1.4 billion. Ivan Seidenberg retired as Verizon's CEO on August 1, 2011. Lowell McAdam succeeded him.

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.

In June 2012, as part of its strategy to expand into new growth areas in its wireless business, Verizon purchased Hughes Telematics—a company that produces wireless features for automobiles—for $612 million. Also in June 2012, 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 in January 2013 released a report detailing the problems that led to the failure. 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.

In July 2012, 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 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.

On June 5, 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 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. (see also MAINWAY article)

In September 2013, Verizon purchased the 45% stake in Verizon Wireless owned by Vodafone for $130 billion. The deal closed on February 21, 2014, becoming 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 that they would seek to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

On January 22, 2014 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."

In late-October 2014, Verizon Wireless launched *SugarString*, a technology news website. 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.

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.

In October 2016, Verizon was accused by Communications Workers of America of deliberately refusing to maintain its copper telephone service. 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, and not to repair 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 a 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 have 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".

In November 2016, Verizon acquired mapping startup SocialRadar; its technology will be integrated with MapQuest.

On January 26, 2017, *The Washington Post* reported that Verizon was in talks to merge with Charter Communications.

On March 13, 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.

On April 27, 2017 Verizon invested $10 million in Renovo Auto, a Campbell, California-based autonomous vehicle company.

Verizon Connect was created in 2018, combining the individual units Telematics, Fleetmatics, and Telogis.

On December 10, 2018 Verizon announced that 10,400 employees would part ways with the company by the middle of 2019 as a part of its strategy to reduce costs. Employees will receive severance of up to 60 weeks salary, a bonus, and benefits depending on the length of their tenure with the company.

#### Acquisition of AOL and Yahoo

On May 12, 2015, Verizon announced they would acquire AOL at $50 per share, for a deal valued around $4.4 billion. The following year, Verizon announced that 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.

On March 16, 2017, Verizon announced that it would discontinue the e-mail services provided for its internet subscribers, and migrate them to AOL Mail.

On May 23, 2017, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed the company's plan to launch a streaming TV service. The integrated AOL-Yahoo operation, housed under the newly created Oath division, will be organized around key content-based pillars.

In a deal which officially closed on June 13, 2017, Yahoo! shareholders approved the sale of some of the company's internet assets to Verizon for $4.48 billion.

On January 17, 2019, Verizon announced that it would offer Verizon spam and robocalling features free of charge to all its customers from March.

## Assets

*Main article: List of assets owned by Verizon, Inc.*

## See also

* List of United States telephone companies