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May 7, 2008

Yesterday, Qwest and Verizon Wireless have signed a 5-year agreement for Qwest to market and sell Verizon Wireless service beginning June 1st.

As usual, financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

Qwest’s agreement with Sprint runs through February 2009, so “there will likely be some overlap,” said Qwest spokeswoman Margaret Forgarty.

Overall, Qwest hopes to migrate the customers on the Sprint network over to Verizon, but a lot of details have yet to be worked out, such as how customers would deal with their Sprint handsets versus getting a Verizon handset.

Both use CDMA, but it’s not clear how easy it might be for customers to move them over.

The relationship with Verizon will look more like Qwest’s model with Direct TV.

Fogarty added “our intent is to give them one billing option, similar to what we do with Direct TV.”

Residential customers will be able to choose the “wireless only” option and be billed directly by Verizon Wireless, or they can include Verizon Wireless as part of a Qwest bundle with their home phone, Internet and video services and still get just one monthly bill from Qwest.

Qwest Chairman and CEO Ed Mueller said Verizon’s “strong reputation” in innovation, network quality, reliability, products and services was very attractive to Qwest.

Unlike the deal with Sprint, where Qwest sold wireless service under the Qwest brand, the agreement with Verizon calls for selling the services branded as Verizon Wireless.

That should go a long way toward clearing up any confusion consumers might have about whose network they’re actually using!

In late 2003-early 2004, Qwest had its own wireless network but has since decided to pursue what amounted to a reseller model.

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Source: Verizon Wireless.