New York - NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) this week granted both Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T) rights to air its Olympics coverage on the broadband, IPTV and mobile platforms. Live event streaming, NBC Olympics video-on-demand and daily highlight clips will be offered on AT&T's U-Verse and Verizon's FiOS TV digital TV services, while on-demand content and interactive widgets will be available to the companies' broadband subscribers. NBC's Olympics 2Go mobile TV channel will be available to both AT&T Mobile TV and Verizon V CAST mobile TV service subscribers; both services are powered by Qualcomm's MediaFLO USA.

New York - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) on Thursday announced the launch of FiOS TV for Business, a new subscription-television service designed for small and medium-sized businesses, delivered by Verizon's fiber-optic network. The new offering makes FiOS TV available to all types of small-business venues, including medical office waiting rooms to banks, building lobbies, restaurants and taverns. Verizon FiOS TV for Business is immediately available in select areas of the 13 states where more than 1.2 million customers already subscribe to the residential version of the service, the company said.

Sacramento, Calif. - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. on Friday asked California's Internet service providers to follow the lead of Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint by "removing child pornography from existing servers and blocking channels" that disseminate the illegal material. Earlier this month, the three ISPs announced an agreement with New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, under which they would eliminate access to child pornography newsgroups on Usenet, and also purge any existing child pornography on their servers.

New York - Major Internet service providers Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) and Sprint (NYSE: S) have agreed to block access to child pornography by eliminating access to child porn newsgroups, and purging their servers of any child porn websites, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday. The companies will also collectively pay $1.1 million to fund additional efforts by the AG's office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to remove child pornography from the Internet.

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) announced on Thursday that it has partnered with Screenvision to test a new text messaging promotion that will interact with moviegoers in theaters before the show begins. Scheduled to debut this month in 10 U.S. markets, the program will poll moviegoers on their music preferences and ask them to text their responses, with audience results then displayed on the movie screen. Screenvision's cinema advertising network currently reaches 14,000 screens across 2,300 U.S. theaters.

Washington - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal in a case involving the rights of consumers to "unlock" mobile phones from a particular network, which in effect will allow a lawsuit charging AT&T (NYSE: T) and T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) with unfair business practices to proceed to trial, Wired.com reported.

New York - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) announced on Tuesday a multi-year deal to offer Starz Play, a broadband video service from the Liberty Media (NASD: LINTA) unit, to its 8.5 million broadband subscribers. The $5.99 per month Starz Play service will offer both live Starz programming, and downloads of 2,500 movies and videos such as "Spider-Man 3" and "Ratatouille" for unlimited viewing for as long as a subscription is current. The deal will also see Verizon offer Starz products to its FiOS TV, FiOS Internet and DSL subscribers.

Basking Ridge, N.J. - Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and international mobile network Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) announced on Tuesday that they will team to offer what they say is the "first ever live global mobile simulcast" tomorrow, when they provide live streaming of Madonna's concert at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City.

New York - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) said on Wednesday that it has filed with the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to become the first provider to offer digital TV service throughout the five boroughs of New York. "Currently, only two legacy cable TV companies operate in separate and distinct parts of the city, leaving consumers, effectively, with little or no competitive choice for their cable TV news, information and entertainment," the company said. If approved, Verizon could begin offering its FiOS TV service in the city later this year.

New York - AOL (NYSE: TWX) on Monday announced the largest win in the brief history of Platform-A, which has been tapped to manage all of the online ad and most of the mobile ad inventory of telecommunications giant Verizon (NYSE: VZ). The deal comes as AOL reportedly is continuing discussions about a possible combination with Yahoo (NASD: YHOO), which is trying to fend off a takeover by Microsoft (NASD: MSFT).

Washington - Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and AT&T (NYSE: T), the nation's two largest wireless carriers, were the big winners in an auction for wireless spectrum that closed last week, according to information released by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

New York - Broadband provider Verizon (NYSE: VZ) will not be policing its own network for illegal file-sharing and reports that a recent test it conducted revealed that the new P4P protocol provides a significant boost in download performance while simultaneously reducing network congestion.

New York - Broadband provider Verizon (NYSE: VZ) will not be policing its own network for illegal filesharing and reports that a recent test it conducted revealed that the new P4P protocol provides a significant boost in download performance while simultaneously reducing network congestion.

Los Angeles - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) on Friday announced that hip-hop producer Timbaland has been named its first Mobile Producer in Residence, who will use the company's V CAST service to launch an entire mobile album during the course of 2008. Timbaland is scheduled to release one new track each month, featuring a different guest artist, exclusively to Verizon Wireless customers through the company's V CAST Music mobile service. Video may also be offered through V CAST Video and Verizon Surround.

New York - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) announced on Monday that its FiOS TV service has surpassed 1 million customers, making it the tenth-largest cable TV provider in the U.S. Launched in September 2005, FiOS TV offers hundreds of digital video and music channels, HD programming, and a library of more than 10,000 video-on-demand titles. It is currently available in parts of California, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.

Washington - Companies bid more than $2.4 billion in the opening round of the Federal Communications Commission's wireless spectrum auction on Thursday, which took place as scheduled despite calls by some to delay it in light of the recent credit crunch. Bidders are vying for pieces of coveted 700 megahertz spectrum in the auction, which is expected to last for several weeks.

New York - Verizon (NYSE: VZ) has announced the addition of HD video-on-demand to its FiOS TV Internet-based digital TV service. The HD VOD service has launched in select markets with an initial slate of 75 titles; Verizon expects to offer 1,000 HD titles on the service by the end of 2008. The FiOS TV service itself expects to offer over 150 HD channels by the end of 2008.

When Apple launched the iPhone exclusively on AT&T’s crumby edge network — and I refused to buy one for that reason — I predicted that Apple’s real endgame was to break the wireless carriers’ stranglehold on handsets, so that Apple could sell iPhones on any network. Sure enough, Verizon just announced that next year it would allow any phone — and any application on any phone — to be used on its network.