Verizon

I WASN'T GOING to write a column this week. Our son's weeklong visit with friends down the shore would be giving my husband and me some time for ourselves, a little vacation. But instead of driving up to Bucks County for the day, or even going out to lunch with my hubby, I'm spending at least some of that time waiting for the Verizon guy to show up. It happens to everyone. And if it's not the phone, it's the refrigerator, or the toilet, or you need the exterminator. If you don't live in an apartment with an extremely nice super, you're stuck waiting, and probably have to take a day off from work.

Striking Verizon Communications Inc. employees will lose their health benefits if they don't return to work by the end of the month, Verizon company spokesman Rich Young said. The Communications Workers of America, which is representing most of the 45,000 workers on strike, said a special union fund will be able to help members cover some of their benefits, CWA spokeswoman Candice Johnson said. The strike began Aug. 7.     - Jane M. Von Bergen

RE TOM SPEYER'S letter: "Please, Council, approve FIOS. " Tom is not alone in the struggle with Comcast. Comcast holds the residents of this city over the coals and pretty much does and charges as it wants because there is no competition. Competition is healthy and I bet Comcast will feel the loss if Verizon is allowed to bring FIOS to Philadelphia. Dish service is not comparable to cable. Maybe the Daily News can start a campaign to get the residents to write members of City Council on this issue.

My con­test with the twin pterodactyls of Phila­del­phia has not been pret­ty. They have bloodied me. My wife, Libby, was ripped apart, too. My ad­vice for fu­ture combatants: Lie down, as­sume the fe­tal po­si­tion, and hope for the best. And make sure your children are safe. Com­cast and Ve­ri­zon are a for­mi­da­ble cor­po­rate tag team. They beat you with scripted ap­o­lo­gies, in­com­pe­tence, and broken promises. Here is what happened: We have Ve­ri­zon for phone and In­ter­net ser­vice and Com­cast for the tele­vi­sion.

Your phone book has a new look. And it's going to get even newer. Besides the new name on the front - Verizon - you'll notice that surnames in the white pages are printed only once at the beginning of the listings. So, instead of encountering seven pages of Smiths, with the name endlessly repeated, for instance, you'll find Smith printed once at the top of the columns and under it those with that last name, i.e., Adam, Alex, April. . . They call it "surname suppression.

Philip Alan Bulliner, 67, a former Philadelphia lawyer and Verizon executive, died of heart failure Tuesday, Jan. 11, at Kindred Hospital in Wayne, N.J. Mr. Bulliner was born in Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Montgomery Blair High School there in 1961. He earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry at Lehigh University in 1965, where he earned the Alfred P. Sloan Scholar and the Scott Paper Co. Scholar awards. He was a member of the Lehigh varsity basketball team and the Theta Chi fraternity.

Ernest McCauley, a retired supervisor for Verizon and a personal fitness trainer, died Saturday. He was 55 and lived in Plymouth Meeting. Known as "Ernie," McCauley had worked for the company for 20 years and retired about a month ago as a supervising senior auditor. He was a licensed electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and a certified personal fitness trainer. "He was a devoted husband," said his wife of 31 years and childhood sweetheart, the former Paula Flamer.

Let's pause for a moment to remember the Internet as we know it. That Internet could soon be gone - in favor of something more like cable TV - if Verizon and MetroPCS Communications get their way in a fight with the Federal Communications Commission. If that sounds a touch alarmist, the two network owners are making some alarming claims in a dispute they have taken to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - above all that, as network owners, they have a First Amendment right to exercise "editorial discretion" over their portions of the Internet, much like a newspaper.

The odds-on favorite for this week's Big News in Technology was expected to emerge from San Francisco, site of Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. Although Apple could surely turn more heads over the next two days, a longshot has taken the lead: Verizon's new scheme for putting a price tag on wireless data. Consider the big picture, and you'll see how these stories are linked. On the Left Coast, Apple is busily trying to hook you on the latest in mobile technology.

Higher telephone rates, service disruptions and confusion will reign if the Board of Public Utilities accepts a petition by AT&T to split Verizon's wholesale and retail operations in New Jersey into two companies. This confusing plan has been thrown out by two nearby states - Pennsylvania and Maryland. When the rest of the nation is passing on excess regulation and embracing market-based competition, AT&T is asking the Garden State to careen backward to heavy-handed government micromanagement.

Freebies from Verizon and Comcast could add to the fun of the Memorial Day Weekend. Verizon's offering a slew of free content for four days, and Comcast's Xfinity is giving away access to thousands of wireless hotspots through Independence Day. From Friday till Tuesday, Verizon subscribers can find more than 1,700 movies and 50 entire TV series through the cable service's 900 channel. That includes such recent theatrical films as Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, The Dark Knight Rises, Bridesmaids, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, The Hunger Games, Hugo, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus , and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows . They're available through Cinemax, ePix, HBO and ViewNow.

In an era when nearly everyone has a cellphone and digital communications are widespread, it can be tough to remember that, for some people in America, an old-fashioned telephone still feels like a crucial lifeline. But there was no mistaking its importance to Mary Hamill - not when I heard the series of breathless voice mails she'd left while I was out of the office for a few days. "I need your help desperately," her first message said. "I'm afraid I'll have a heart attack and be unable to call 911. " Hamill, 85, complained that Verizon had cut off her phone because of missed payments while she was away in Florida and a subsequent tiff over a missing check.

The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia migrated for the first time in its own subscription series Sunday from its usual Perelman Theater quarters to the larger Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center, and with good reason: Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 . It's a piece that needs more room. Also significant, conductor laureate Ignat Solzhenitsyn (a much-seasoned Beethovenian) returned to conduct a smaller-scale, gently provocative performance that reminded you how seldom the composer's grandest symphony is heard with fine nuances.

Andrew Dougherty, 54, of Upper Darby, a former account executive at Verizon, died Thursday, April 4, at Fair Acres, a care facility in Lima, of complications from corticobasal degeneration, a rare neurodegenerative disease. He was diagnosed with the ailment in 2010, his brother Larry said. Mr. Dougherty died on his birthday. He was born in Lansdowne on April 4, 1959, and grew up Upper Darby. He attended St. Alice Elementary School in Upper Darby and graduated in 1977 from St. Joseph's Prep, where he was boys' basketball manager.

When composer Eric Whitacre launched his East Coast tour Monday, he received such a rock-star greeting that he wondered whether he should have a stack of amplifiers and a mean-sounding Stratocaster. "I felt a little guilty," he says. "I wanted to have something to meet that young energy. " Instead, he conducted 30-plus singers in Monteverdi and his own trademark ethereal tones, which many listeners drove considerable distances to hear at the Strathmore concert hall near Baltimore.

Nettie Salamon, 100, of Northeast Philadelphia, who ran Nettie's Food Market in Frankford until it closed in the 1970s, died Friday, Feb. 8, of heart failure at Jeanes Hospital. A positive person, Miss Salamon's last words were: "Everything is all right here," said her sister-in-law, Bernice Salamon. Miss Salamon inherited her family's mom-and-pop grocery at 3876 Frankford Ave. She sold meat, dairy, produce, and staple goods before closing the store to take a job as a clerical worker with what is now Verizon.

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu may have coined a phrase - "network neutrality" - that's become the cri de coeur for a generation of geeks and Internet evangelists. But maybe more than anyone, Wu knows it's a concept easier said than accomplished - or protected. It might sound painfully wonkish, but bear with me. Net neutrality is essential if the Internet is to continue to live up to its tremendous promise. And it's once again at risk, thanks to some powerful companies and some wishful decisions by Congress, federal regulators, and the courts.

Let's pause for a moment to remember the Internet as we know it. That Internet could soon be gone - in favor of something more like cable TV - if Verizon and MetroPCS Communications get their way in a fight with the Federal Communications Commission. If that sounds a touch alarmist, the two network owners are making some alarming claims in a dispute they have taken to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals - above all that, as network owners, they have a First Amendment right to exercise "editorial discretion" over their portions of the Internet, much like a newspaper.

After last year's two-week strike and more than a year of bargaining, Verizon Communications Inc. and two unions primarily involved with Verizon's landline business reached a tentative agreement Wednesday, the company and unions said. Besides an $800 onetime signing bonus and $700 in annual profit sharing, the agreement, which covers 43,000 workers in the mid-Atlantic states and New England, provides an 8.2 percent increase over three years and continues pensions for current workers.

Verizon Wireless' proposal to buy unused airwaves from cable providers led by Comcast Corp. has enough votes to win regulatory clearance from the Federal Communications Commission, agency officials say. The five-member agency's two Republican commissioners have cast electronic votes to approve the $3.6 billion deal, joining Democratic chairman Julius Genachowski, said two FCC officials who declined to be identified because the tally has not been...