Deploying its residential VoIP offering more widely, Verizon said it has rolled FiOS Digital Voice out to cover the entire footprint of its FiOS triple play service. The markets in which Digital Voice service is available now include New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Delaware, Pennsylvania and California.
The service offers “21 industry-leading features,” the company said in a statement, including live voice-mail screening, voice-mail to email, an online call manager and Caller ID on TV.
Verizon has had a tangled relationship with VoIP service to date. Launched in 2004, its VoiceWing VoIP offering never received full backing from the corporation and was shut down last year after a long period without marketing support. Last year, however, Verizon executives said the carrier will move to an all-IP network within seven years. Digital Voice is now fully bundled with FiOS offerings, including a limited-time (through July 24) $100-a-month triple play package.
It’s good timing for the telco to more highly tout its VoIP offerings, as many carriers have acknowledged that trying to stem conventional landline losses is futile and as triple-play bundles from cable-providers gain more market traction. Comcast Corp. – already the leading provider of VoIP in the country, with 7.4 million subscribers – said last week it would acquire wholesale VoIP provider New Global Telecom Inc. Verizon has a customer-service edge, though: FiOS ranked No. 1 among residential pay-TV services, ahead of both cable and satellite providers and essentially tied with U-Verse, from AT&T.
Also, Frontier Communications this week posted a FAQ on its Web site to assure the 100,000 FiOS subscribers acquired by Frontier -- in an $8.6 billion, 14-state transaction that was approved last month by the FCC – that they will continue to have access to FiOS.
