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from: Verizon Investor Conferences

From the Lehman Brothers 2007 Equity Research Worldwide Wireless and Wireline Conference with Doreen Toben, EVP and CFO, May 31, 2007. Doreen's comments confirm past statements made by telco executives when speaking to investor groups, that local franchising is not a problem (it suits their rate of roll-out actually).

Question: Audience Member

As sort of a tag-along to that, can you update us at all on some of the state franchising initiatives for some of the bigger states that are still holdouts?

Response: Doreen Toben - Verizon - EVP, CFO

As you know, we've been pretty successful in most of our states. The ones that we don't have state franchises on that are material are really Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York. We have been extremely successful in Pennsylvania in going town by town. Pennsylvania has a lot of consortiums that have come together that cover multiple towns, so I think we will be able to do what we need to in Pennsylvania. The same is true for Massachusetts, from that point, which leaves New York. New York, at this point, I think we will continue to go town by town for the foreseeable future, certainly through this year. It certainly gives us all the franchising that we need. So, if you look at sort of our deployment plan and the franchise, and the franchising, I think we are franchising in over 10 million homes. I think that's about right. So we certainly have enough to build this year and next year. So we don't think that our franchising is holding us up at all at this point.