Verizon Communications Inc. might be considering taking office space in Fairfield County, despite the area sitting firmly in the territory of rival AT&T Inc. on the landline side of the business.
Two company spokesmen, however, said they could not confirm any such plans.
Verizon has landline operations in portions of Greenwich, where it has some 40,000 customer lines in service, down a third from 2001. AT&T dominates the rest of the county, due to predecessor company SBC Communications”™ acquisition of Southern New England Telephone in 1998.
Verizon was formed two years later in the merger of Bell Atlantic and GTE, with the latter company based in Stamford for a period. The 1973 completion of GTE”™s former headquarters at One Stamford Forum on Interstate 95 is credited with helping spark a building boom in Stamford that eventually transformed the city into a magnet for corporate headquarters and financial companies.
Frontier Communications Corp. has long had its headquarters in Stamford, despite not offering service in Connecticut and having its main operations base in Rochester, N.Y.
Â
Verizon is currently completing a $5.3 billion deal to sell customer accounts and operations in rural areas to Frontier.
It was unclear whether Verizon may be considering locating operations here that are currently in New York City, Westchester County, N.Y., New Jersey or elsewhere. Verizon developed much of its FiOS Internet TV service at a technology lab in White Plains; Verizon Wireless is based in Basking Ridge, N.J. The wireless unit this month inked a lease renewal on 200,000 square feet of space in Boston.
Â
Verizon spokesman John Bonomo could not confirm the company was prospecting for office space in Fairfield County, and said that if it was it would be more likely a Verizon Wireless move. Mike Murphy, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless, said he was not aware of any plans on his side of the Verizon house.
Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg stunned analysts last month, after admitting that the company increasingly regards its traditional telephone business as an adjunct to its fast-growing mobile subscription business. This month, Verizon announced it would consolidate its separate Verizon Business and Verizon Telecom under a single management structure. Also this month, the company completed its acquisition of Alltel Corp.”™s wireless operations, which will require additional restructuring.
In the past few years, Verizon has sold off its Ma Bell-era main offices in New York City and Boston, even as it shrinks the size of its work force by some 16,000 positions since mid-2008.
“We are attacking all cost categories including network integration, travel, sourcing, (and) rationalizing our real estate portfolio,” said John Killian, chief financial officer of Verizon, in a July briefing with investment analysts.
Regardless of whether some Verizon employees may be getting new phone numbers with the 203 area code, Verizon, AT&T and other providers are readying for two new area codes in Connecticut, with new subscribers to receive the area code 475 in the area currently served by the 203 prefix beginning Dec. 12. At a later date, new subscribers in the current 860 area code territory will begin receiving a second new area code of 959.
The state will launch mandatory 10-digit dialing on Nov. 14.
