Verizon Moves To Become Internet Pure Play

Verizon, the communications giant, says it plans to divest itself of its white-and-yellow page phone-directories business, in a deal that could be valued at more than $17 billion, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.

The move will lighten the company’s debt load and focus Verizon’s corporate resources on television and the Internet, as it continues its estimated $20 billion “last-mile” initiative to replace its entire copper network with fiber-optic strands and start offering television to its customers. (For more on Verizon’s fiber optic strategy, see CIO’s profile of Verizon CIO Shaygan Kheradpir in “Sleepless in Manhattan”).

Shedding the directories business will also allow Verizon to invest more heavily in Verizon Wireless and its expected acquisition of MCI and, the company believes, make it more attractive to investors enthralled by the promise of wireless convergence.

–David Rosenbaum