New Features Put More Power in Customers' Hands to Pay Bills, Order Service and Check on Repair Status

NEW YORK -- Verizon Communications customers can now do business with the company, online, any time, in ways not possible until now. The company has undertaken one of the largest and most complex server integration projects ever, to make it happen.

On the newly designed Web site, www.verizon.com, customers can pay their bills, order telecommunications products or request repairs.

"Verizon's new Web site transforms the way we can connect with customers," said Bruce Gordon, president, Retail Markets. "It's all online, open anytime. We've put more power in our customers' hands by creating a full-featured 'e-business' Web site for telecommunications services."

"Our site now offers an interactive channel for doing business with virtually every one of our business units. Our mission was to create a site for interaction between our customers and the company, whether for purchases or to do research about bills, bargains and bundles."

Shaygan Kheradpir, president, Verizon's e-Business Group, said, "Verizon is taking a leadership position and innovatively using the Internet to deliver world-class service to our customers. Verizon employees worked feverishly and, in less than a year, built a 21st century customer channel that tied together 70 core legacy systems and thousands of business processes. We brought together servers and systems from coast-to-coast. The customer benefits of a user-friendly system are substantial," he said.

In October, Frost & Sullivan awarded the revamped Verizon.com its 2001
Market Engineering Award for Web Site Leadership Award. The award is bestowed each year upon the company that has demonstrated excellence in Web site strategy for their industry.

Features and Functionality

Besides offering products and services that have not been available before via the Web site, Verizon.com's home page now features a cleaner look. Visitors can navigate the site more easily, clicking their way directly to the specific company service or selection required.

"Whether you are ordering a service or checking a bill, key interactions are generally no more than a few clicks away. The site is streamlined which makes surfing and customer transactions with Verizon simpler and faster," said Kheradpir.

New features for wireline residential and small/medium business customers include the ability to:

• Easily access services and records after a one-time registration that also protects customer's privacy;
• Initiate new Verizon local phone service, pick out a new telephone number and get a date for when service will start;
• Order DSL (digital subscriber line) service or Verizon Long Distance;
• Add a calling services, like Caller ID, Home Voice Mail or Call Waiting quickly;
• Pay a telephone bill online or review previous bills up to a year old;
• Find a name that matches a listed telephone number through a reverse directory service;
• Order phone books;
• Access helpful hints, service descriptions and instructions, as well as term definitions in the Learning Center.

Verizon will tell its residential customers about the new Web site in bill inserts soon. More information is available at www.verizon.com.

Upcoming Enhancements

With the Verizon.com platform in place, the company will continue to add enhancements to the site in the next few months to make the user experience even more efficient and productive. The site will continue to feature Verizon's "Web exclusive" tools, offer enhanced customer service functionality and introduce new e-services.

While the new online features will provide a new way to do business with Verizon, customers can still call the company's customer service centers to order service, report repair problems or ask a billing question.

Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) is one of the world's leading providers of communications services. Verizon companies are the largest providers of wireline and wireless communications in the United States, with 128.5 million access line equivalents and 28.7 million wireless customers. Verizon is also the largest directory publisher in the world. A Fortune 10 company with 256,000 employees and approximately $65 billion in annual revenues, Verizon's global presence extends to more than 40 countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. For more information on Verizon, visit www.verizon.com.

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VERIZON
FACT SHEET

Verizon.com

New Features for Verizon's residential and small/medium business wireline customers:

• One-time registration
• Single shopping cart
• Online bill payment
• Online ordering
• Initiate new service and select from five telephone numbers
• Quickly add new services like Caller ID and Home Voice Mail
• E-repair for making service appointments and track progress
• Online diagnostic telephone testing with immediate results
• A frequently asked questions (FAQ) section where customers can type in a question and get an answer

Additional Services Available on Verizon's new Web site

• Vanity phone number requests
• Global area code and time zone look-up tool
• Residential and business white pages look-up tool
• Reverse number look-up tool

Previews of future services

• Unified communications
• Verizon Web conference connections
• A faster ordering process
• More products available to order online

Technical Highlights

• Linked 70 core legacy applications on hundreds of mainframes and servers (wrote hundreds of real-time interfaces to link those systems, comprising a mix of Unix and mainframe applications, and wrote millions of lines of code to accommodate the differences in those systems.)
• 50 major applications for registration, ordering, billing & repair with over 1,500 pages
• 65 advanced applications (former GTE and Bell Atlantic companies had 5)
• Created six environments: development, integration, UAT, training, staging and production.
• Four million lines of code.