Verizon Launches Promo-Less Freedom Essential Offer

In a perplexing voice marketing move, Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ) has begun direct-mailing customers, pushing its non-VoIP Verizon Freedom Essentials unlimited calling plan for ... its retail price of $49.99, and without specific mention of other services.

Typically, direct-mail pieces emphasize a special rate, promotion, free giveaway, or some extra incentive to sign up for a service or services. This Verizon voice offer is available until year-end, with three free calling features, and instructs customers who call in to “ask about special offers available now.”

One that stands out, and that grabbed big attention this past summer was a double play from Verizon that included the above-mentioned Freedom Essentials package – and FiOS TV – for a mere $74.99 a month for the first year.

But wait, there’s more. With the mid-summer offer, Verizon offered new subscribers an additional total of $100 in credits if they ordered the tandem online. The Verizon double-play also is different in that it’s not a bare bones digital TV service with access to on-demand content. It includes FiOS TV Premier, with 200 channels.

Credits aside, taking Freedom Essentials as a standalone package at regular rates seems a reach, when you consider adding FiOS TV for about $25 a month more.

In related news, Verizon has been aggressively pushing a triple play bundle that includes DIRECTV, not FiOS TV in towns where the telco is already deploying FiOS TV, perhaps in an aggressive move based on winning customers away from cable TV at any rate.

Verizon is not alone in its voice marketing challenges. AT&T Inc. (T) stopped taking orders from new customers for its four year-old CallVantage VoIP calling service in midsummer, and has yet to lay out a detailed migration plan for consumers and businesses who use it.

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