Verizon Markets Services at Mall Stores

A family walks past the new Verizon Experience store at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Va. on Tuesday Dec. 19, 2006. The phone company is following Apple Computer Inc. and other high-tech companies that have opened stores in shopping malls to show off their offerings to consumers. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (Jacquelyn Martin - AP)

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Verizon Communications Inc. has flooded mailboxes, gone door to door and even handed out free ice cream as it seeks to sell its new FiOS television, telephone and high-speed Internet service. Now, the phone company is following Apple Computer Inc. and other high-tech companies that have opened stores in shopping malls to show off their offerings to consumers.

The stores, called Verizon Experience, provide a snazzy setting for people to toy with new gadgets, play computer games, lounge in front of high-definition TV sets and see how they're all enhanced by FiOS, its multibillion dollar effort to replace the copper wires of its telephone network with high-capacity fiber-optic lines.

"This is a place where you can touch and feel and see it all, and it's all under one roof," said Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson, who said the company is not abandoning its other marketing and retail strategies.

Verizon Wireless _ a joint venture of Verizon and Britain's Vodafone Group PLC _ and other cell phone providers have long used retail outlets in malls and elsewhere to sell phones and service contracts.

But Verizon believes its Experience stores are a new concept, particularly in the cable and satellite TV industry where providers more frequently market their products at Best Buy Co. Inc., Circuit City Stores Inc. and other electronics retailers.

The Verizon Experience stores perhaps bear the closest resemblance to those owned by Apple, which has opened 147 stores worldwide since 2001 to showcase its computers, software and iPods.

Verizon opened its 5,000-square-feet Fairfax store Dec. 15 inside Fair Oaks Mall with little advertisement or fanfare. On a recent weekday afternoon, the 20 or so staff members outnumbered customers.

The store is considerably busier in the evening _ in part due to its prime location next to a new Cheesecake Factory that often draws an overflow crowd.

Verizon has so far opened only one other store _ in Southlake, Texas, near Dallas. Both stores are located in Verizon's most developed FiOS markets.

Still, even in northern Virginia, many of the customers who come in to check out the FiOS service are not yet able to subscribe, as Verizon continues to lay out the miles of fiber-optic cable for the service.

"One of the hardest thing we have to do is disappoint customers who check us out and are excited by what we have to offer, but we just can't yet provide the service to them," said Andrew Vardaro, the store manager at Fair Oaks.

Verizon will decide some time in 2007 whether to open additional stores.