Verizon offers digital phone service

Verizon is offering its telephone customers a new option called FiOS Digital Voice, accompanied by several new services, the company said this week.

The new service will allow Verizon phone users to:

• - Listen to live voice mails before deciding whether to take the call.
• - Get online lists of names, phone numbers, time, location and duration of all incoming and outgoing calls.
• - Program up to three additional phone numbers where incoming calls will ring, in succession, before going to voice mail.
• - See incoming caller information on TV screens.

Verizon says the new phone service is sent using the same Voice Over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, technology that many phone providers use -- but instead of being routed over the public Internet it remains within Verizon's privately-managed network. Except, that is, when the call connects to a phone on a traditional non-Verizon system.

Other phone service providers including Cablevision (which owns Newsday) also offer Voice Over Internet Protocol telephone service.
 
Verizon is selling the new phone service packaged with Internet and TV service. Many of the Digital Voice features are unavailable for Verizon customers who now subscribe to its “Freedom Essentials” voice service, the company said.

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