Verizon Wireless Builds On Commanding Lead In Multimedia Services With 3D Games On V CAST

SAN DIEGO and BEDMINSTER, NJ — From the BREW Developers Conference in San Diego, Verizon Wireless, the nation's leading wireless provider, announced today that total Get It Now® downloads are expected to surpass the 200 million download milestone by the end of this month. Get It Now currently contains a library of more than 500 games, productivity tools, information services, ring tone providers, wallpaper providers, an IM chat client — Mobile IM — that includes access to Yahoo! Messenger, MSN® Messenger, or AOL® IM (AIM), and more.

Verizon Wireless nationally launched Get It Now in September 2002. The most recent addition to the Get It Now family of downloads are Get It Now 3D Games, available through the company's V CAST wireless multimedia service. Fueling awareness and demand for all mobile applications, Verizon Wireless has extensively marketed the new V CAST entertainment service. Introduced in the first quarter of 2005, 3D Games are expected to be a large growth segment in upcoming months.

While the company is on track to break the 200 million download benchmark within a few short weeks, Verizon Wireless also announced its Get It Now customers have downloaded:

• More than 120 million applications in the past 12 months, up from 61.5 million downloads during the prior 12 month period.
• More than 56 million applications in the first five months of 2005, compared to 34 million during the same time period of 2004.
• More than 22.5 million game applications from January through May 2005 — nearly double the same period last year.
• More than 50 million games have been downloaded since the launch of the service.

"Get It Now has gone mainstream — we moved beyond the early adopter crowd a long time ago and are increasingly reaching the broader consumer and enterprise markets," said John Stratton, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. "This broader market penetration is a direct result of our joint efforts with the developer community. While we celebrate our successes, we must anticipate the future; customers are more sophisticated, increasingly savvy about mobile, and exhibit much broader and more diverse tastes. At Verizon Wireless, we are poised for that future."

Speaking at the BREW Developers Conference today at 10:40 a.m., Stratton is expected to outline Verizon Wireless' broadband vision, examine strategies for success and discuss how Verizon Wireless' nationwide deployment of its 3G EV-DO network provides an unprecedented opportunity for developers to create new and exciting mobile applications. Get It Now is available on 26 million handsets — more than half of all handsets currently being used by Verizon Wireless' 45.5 million customers and double the number of handsets from one year ago. Verizon Wireless' ongoing commitment to make ever more powerful handsets available to its customers is driving this adoption and providing developers with new opportunities to develop more advanced applications.

Get It Now's virtual shopping aisles include getGAMES, getTONES, getGOING, getPIX, getFUN and getMESSAGING — giving Verizon Wireless customers an easy way to find what they want, when they want it.

The most popular category remains getGAMES, the virtual shopping aisle that offers new 3D Games on V CAST-enabled phones, as well as puzzle and strategy games, action and sports games, classics based on popular board games and games based on favorite television shows and top movie titles.

Other popular aisles in the Get It Now virtual store are getTONES and getPIX. getTONES offers customers thousands of true tone and polyphonic ring tone selections, consisting of pop, hip-hop, country, classical, voice tones from celebrities and sounds from popular movies and television. getPIX provides a variety of downloadable applications to view, store and share photos.

New applications are introduced every Wednesday, so customers can keep their handsets up to date with the latest releases.

"Developers should continue to focus on quality, innovation and creativity," said Jim Straight, vice president of wireless Internet and multimedia services for Verizon Wireless. "Customers want to extend the gaming experience from the console to their wireless phones. Our content providers understand our drive to bring new titles to our diverse customer base — but they also understand what really drives adoption: how well applications work on the handset."

For more information on Get It Now, visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow.  

About Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless owns and operates the nation's most reliable wireless network, serving 45.5 million voice and data customers. Headquartered in Bedminster, NJ, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD). Find more information on the Web at www.verizonwireless.com. To preview and request broadcast-quality video footage and high-resolution stills of Verizon Wireless operations, log on to the Verizon Wireless Multimedia Library at www.verizonwireless.com/multimedia.  

About Get It Now
Get It Now from Verizon Wireless puts a virtual software store inside a wireless phone and lets customers download applications over the air and purchase them directly from their phones. Virtual shopping aisles, including getGAMES, getTONES, getGOING, getPIX, getFUN and getMESSAGING, are organized to help customers find what they want, when they want it.

Get It Now is a registered trademark of Verizon Wireless.

NOTE: This press release contains statements about expected future events and financial results that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. For those statements, we claim the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The following important factors could affect future results and could cause those results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements: materially adverse changes in economic conditions in the markets served by us, an adverse change in the ratings afforded our debt securities or those of Verizon Communications by nationally accredited ratings organizations, the effects of the substantial competition that exists in our markets, which has been intensifying, and which may intensify further as a result of local number portability regulations that allow wireless customers to retain their phone numbers when switching wireless service providers, our ability to obtain sufficient financing to satisfy our substantial capital requirements, including to fund capital expenditures, debt repayment and distributions to our owners, our ability to obtain sufficient spectrum licenses, particularly in our most densely populated areas, our ability to develop future business opportunities, including wireless data services, and to continue to adapt to the changing conditions in the wireless industry, our ability to receive satisfactory service from our key vendors and suppliers, our ability to generate additional subscribers, with acceptable levels of churn, from resellers and distributors of our service, material changes in available technology, and technology substitution that could impact the popularity and usage of our technology, our continued provision of satisfactory service to our subscribers at an acceptable cost, in order to reduce churn, the impact of continued unionization efforts with respect to our employees, regulatory developments, including new regulations that could increase our cost of doing business or reduce demand for our services, developments in connection with existing or future litigation, and changes in our accounting assumptions that regulatory agencies, including the SEC, may require or that result from changes in the accounting rules or their application, which could result in an impact on earnings.

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