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)

FiOS is one of the company's most ambitious projects ever, as it seeks to become a one-stop shop for its customers' communications needs with its new fiber lines that run all the way to a customer's home.

Establishing FiOS infrastructure is incredibly expensive: the company estimates it will spend $23 billion just to rewire its network.

FiOS TV has been launched in parts of seven states: Texas, California, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, Massachusetts and New York. FiOS Internet service is available in parts of 16 states.

The company said it has about 118,000 TV subscribers nationally out of more than 1 million who are able to receive the service.

The D.C. and northern Virginia market has been particularly competitive.

Alex Horwitz, a spokesman for Cox Communications, which provides cable TV to about 250,000 subscribers in Fairfax County, Va., noted that Cox has its own sales station and marketing presence inside Fair Oaks Mall.

Horwitz said Cox, like other cable operators, offers bundled Internet, phone and TV service for as low as $79 a month. (The price of FiOS services varies by location.)

Verizon has been particularly aggressive in marketing FiOS as it becomes available: Sales reps go door-to-door when new neighborhoods become wired for service. Direct mail advertisements are frequent. And the company has even sent ice cream trucks into neighborhoods, with free treats for people who check if the service is available at their home addresses.

Dennis Mendyk, managing director of New York-based Heavy Reading, a market research publication dedicated to the telecom industry, said the massive marketing effort is appropriate given the challenge Verizon faces in getting FiOS _ particularly FiOS TV _ up and running.

"It's very expensive, but from their point of view this is the next great battle," Mendyk said. "The cable operators and the telecom operators have identified each other as their main competitors. The spending on convincing consumers to pick one side or the other will be intense for probably the next three to five years."

Verizon would not discuss whether it has sold any FiOS subscriptions since the store opened, saying the information is proprietary. But Johnson said the stores serve their purpose even if customers don't sign up on the spot, because they expose new customers to products and services in a favorable way.

Danny Olguin of Fairfax represents exactly the type of customer Verizon is targeting. He and his family just moved to Virginia from Arkansas and were checking out the mall when they saw the Verizon store and decided to look at cell phones. They ended up spending more than half an hour in the store eyeing both phones and FiOS.

"I wasn't at all aware" of FiOS TV, Olguin said. "It's really fascinating. Maybe down the road we will decide to subscribe."

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On the Net:

Verizon FiOS: http://www.verizonfios.com/