Verizon

As a Verizon Wireless customer, I have hourlong monthly conversations with sweet/rude service people who swear that I or my wife and daughters have signed ourselves up for joke messages ("Joke is on cellphone customers," Consumer Confidential, Jan. 23). The story prompted me to peruse my Verizon bills carefully, and guess what? It's not the service providers who are bilking customers, it's Verizon. Jamie Anderson Glendale

MUSIC Glenn Danzig is one of the most iconic names in punk and goth music, and he finally brings all of his ensembles (including Samhain, Danzig and, yes, a reunion with his legendary Misfits) into one workhorse night. You'll never see so many mono-bang haircuts in one place again. Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre, 8808 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine. 7:15 p.m. Sat. $13.13-$69.50. livenation.com.

Verizon Wireless, the second-largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will offer month-to-month contracts that don't have cancellation fees, a bid to attract customers wary of long-term commitments. Monthly subscribers will pay the same rates as those with long-term contracts, though they won't get discounts on new handsets, a Verizon spokeswoman said. Verizon and larger rival AT&T Inc. faced criticism from lawmakers and consumers who said fees for canceling contracts early were too high.

For Verizon Communication, the iPhone is the gift that keeps giving. Monthly bills for all those iPhone 4S smartphones that found new homes over the holidays are to be thanked for a boost in first-quarter revenue. The impact of the iPhone generated the fastest revenue growth in three years for Verizon Wireless, the country's biggest wireless carrier. The average monthly bill was up 3.6% from a year ago to $55.43. Selling the iPhone is a mixed blessing for carriers. Initially, they bear the cost of the phone, subsidizing them by hundreds of dollars.

Verizon Wireless agreed to pay $21 million to resolve a consumer lawsuit targeting early cancellation fees in mobile phone contracts. The settlement, announced during a trial in Oakland, resolves consumer claims in the U.S. without an admission of wrongdoing by the company. The Verizon agreement doesn't affect current contracts because cancellation fees now decrease over time, a spokeswoman said. The contracts covered by the settlement have a flat-rate cancellation fee and were issued before Verizon Wireless introduced the declining-fee structure in 2006.

The Federal Trade Commission has removed the last regulatory hurdle for Verizon Wireless' purchase of Alltel Corp., which will create the country's largest wireless carrier, the agency said. The FTC's antitrust regulators approved an early termination of their antitrust review, indicating that they had no objections. The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department have signed off on the deal, with conditions that included the sale of some service areas. Verizon Wireless is paying $5.9 billion and assuming $22.2 billion of Alltel's debt.

Rising prices, lower quality, less convenience — consumers can put up with a lot. But one thing I've consistently heard from people is that they won't stand for lousy service. And I can understand why. There's just no excuse for businesses treating customers like unwanted dinner guests, tapping their corporate feet until the annoyance goes away. It's a symbiotic relationship. We need businesses to provide the stuff we want. But they need us just as much to buy their stuff.

With Verizon Wireless expected to start offering the iPhone, a key issue for consumers is: Will the popular device cause the network the same kind of problems it did at AT&T? Although more than 73 million iPhones have been sold worldwide since Apple Inc. introduced the smart phone in mid-2007, in the U.S. its sole carrier ? AT&T ? has weathered complaints from users about slow performance and dropped calls. The phone, expected to be added to the Verizon roster Tuesday, has data-intensive features such as the online game-playing and streaming that have been blamed for AT&T's woes.

Verizon put Apple Inc.'s iPhone on sale Thursday, and at least some people showed up to buy it. The 20 people lined up at Verizon's marquee Burbank store were a far cry, however, from the hundreds that often throng Apple's retail stores in anticipation of new products. Reports from around the U.S. suggested that lines were substantially shorter for the Verizon iPhone than they had been when the latest version of the phone debuted for AT&T customers in July. Still, Brett Rarick and Joey Jepson, both 20, arrived at the Burbank store at 3:30 a.m. to claim their spots at the head of the line.

Verizon Wireless is backing a free operating system that competes with programs from Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. and expects it to become the "preferred" software on its network. It's the first U.S. cellphone company to join the LiMo Foundation, which aims to unite handset makers, software companies and carriers on a software platform that will make it easier and cheaper to create a wide variety of phones. Verizon's endorsement is an important boost to the stature of LiMo, or Linux Mobile, in the U.S. LiMo already has the backing of large Asian and European carriers, as well as such handset makers as Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc.

WASHINGTON - Verizon Wireless plans to sell billions of dollars' worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum primarily from large cable companies. Verizon, which paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band, said it no longer would need that spectrum to deploy its fourth-generation LTE network if the cable deals are approved. Among the spectrum Verizon plans to sell are swaths covering Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and other major metropolitan areas.

WASHINGTON -- Verizon Wireless said it would sell billions of dollars worth of prime airwaves if regulators approve its planned purchases of new chunks of spectrum that come mainly from large cable companies. Verizon paid about $4.4 billion in 2008 in a government auction of coveted airwaves in the 700-megahertz band that the company said it no longer would need if the other deals are approved. The wireless giant's announcement Wednesday was designed to reduce criticism from competitors and public interest groups about its purchase of spectrum from a consortium of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks, as well as other acquisitions of spectrum from Cox Communications Inc. and Leap Wireless International Inc. “Since wireless operators, large and small, have expressed concern about the availability of high-quality spectrum, we believe our 700 megahertz licenses will be attractive to a wide range of buyers,” said Molly Feldman, vice president of business development at Verizon Wireless.  The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice are reviewing Verizon's new spectrum purchases.

SACRAMENTO - A coalition led by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. is backing legislation that critics contend would strip the state Public Utilities Commission of its last vestige of regulatory power over basic land-line telephone service. The bill, authored by the powerful chairmen of the Senate and Assembly committees overseeing utilities, would ensure that state agencies have "no regulatory jurisdiction or control" over telephone calls that involve sending voice signals over the Internet.

The iPhone has been a huge hit for Apple Inc., helping send the company's stock to all-time highs and producing record-breaking profits. But for AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc., it's breaking the bank. The three wireless carriers all found themselves answering to Wall Street in recent weeks for posting depressed quarterly earnings, and analysts pointed to the heavy cost of offering the iPhone as a culprit. The iPhone has become the single most popular smartphone in the U.S., and that has left the carriers trapped in a kind of Faustian deal: The more iPhones they sell, the more money they lose.

Redbox is hooking up with Verizon Communications Inc. as part of a major step forward to compete with Netflix Inc. in both the digital and physical worlds. The company famous for its ubiquitous red DVD rentals kiosks announced Monday that it would form a joint venture with telecom giant Verizon to create an online movie subscription service. Redbox also agreed to spend up to $100 million to acquire the Blockbuster-branded DVD kiosks operated by NCR Corp., its largest competitor in that business, adding about 9,000 machines to its existing base of 35,400.

You could call it the ghost of Christmas sales past. Verizon's double-data promotion for 4G smartphones will return on Friday. First introducted in November and running just past the new year, the double-data offer raises the caps on Verizon 4G customers' data plans at no additional cost. The promotion is only available on Verizon's 4G smartphones and only to customers who are either new to Verizon or are upgrading from a non-4G handset to a 4G phone, said Ken Muche, a Verizon spokesman.

Verizon Wireless has started selling a device that boosts cellphone signals in a home for $250, making it easier for people to rely solely on wireless. The Verizon Wireless Network Extender is a device known as a femtocell and needs to be connected to a broadband Internet line. It then acts like a miniature cellular tower, listening for signals from a subscriber's cellphone. It covers up to 5,000 square feet. Verizon, the nation's largest carrier, is following in the footsteps of Sprint Nextel Corp.

The Federal Communications Commission, kicking off a new round of telephone-industry consolidation, approved Verizon Wireless's $28.1-billion purchase of Alltel Corp. and a deal between Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. The commission voted 5 to 0 to give conditional clearance to the Alltel acquisition, requiring Verizon to sell network operations in 105 markets where its service overlaps with Alltel's. The FCC also voted unanimously to support Sprint's plan to merge a high-speed wireless network with Clearwire.

Looking for an Android with a physical keyboard? If so, you'll definitely want to look at Motorola's Droid 4 , which hits Verizon on Friday. Priced at $199.99 with a two-year service contract, the Droid 4 features a 4-inch touch screen with a full, slide-out keyboard underneath. A 1.2-gigahertz dual-core processor, a gigabyte of RAM and 16 gigabytes of built-in storage are packed into the new phone's frame, which is less than 0.5 inches thick. The Droid 4 has an eight-megapixel/1080p camera on the back, with a 1.3-megapixel/720p camera out front.

The Motorola Droid Razr is buy one, get one free through Verizon Wireless starting Friday. The limited-time promotion is the latest move from Verizon, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the Razr, in a bid to do just about all it can to get the thinnest 4G phone on the market off store shelves and into the hands of consumers. After launching in November at a price of $299.99 on a two-year data plan, Verizon and Motorola cut the Razr down to $199.99 (and down to 16-gigabytes of included storage from 32 gigabytes)