Our Core Purpose: We bring the benefits of communications to everybody.

Our Core Values --

Veritas Values: Integrity, Respect

Horizon Values: Imagination, Passion

Service: Service is the value that bridges our past and future. It captures our reliability, quality, and excellent performance for customers.

Our Core Goal: We will create the most respected brand in communications.

Our Future: We will be a successful company when we make and keep our promises to:

	. . . our customers
	. . . our communities
	. . . our shareholders
	. . . and our employees

Why a Verizon Promise?

Creating a great company -- and a great brand -- boils down to two simple things:

	Making the right promises
	Keeping them

But notice something: the word "promise" is much more powerful than the words "strategy" and "performance." That's because strategy and performance are about corporations. Promises are about people. And that's why we aren't introducing the Verizon Strategy or the Verizon Performance Plan. It's the Verizon Promise. Because it's about people. It's the people who work for this company who are going to determine whether we keep our promises or not -- and whether we win or lose. To understand the Verizon Promise, let's take it step by step, and start with its framework.

Built to Last: There are many ways to construct a vision and values platform. The framework used here is based on the best-selling book Built to Last. The authors of this book spent years studying companies that not only had attained world class status, but sustained that level for decades. Companies like Sony and Merck, companies that other companies admire and study, and companies that are literally built to last.

Truly visionary companies have a Core Purpose that is a simple and lasting statement of what the company does and why people come to work -- a set of Core Values that define behavior and attitude in employees, one or more Core Goals that really stretch the organization, and a vivid description of the future.

Our Core Purpose, Values, Goals, and Future

The Core Purpose defines the company at its most fundamental. Ours does just that: We bring the benefits of communications to everybody. There are several very important words in this statement:

"We" means everyone who works for the Verizon brand.

"Benefits" is a big one and goes to the heart of why what we do matters. It isn't just the technology we bring. It's the benefits that result, like connecting human beings to each other; enabling commerce; creating solutions that help families stay in touch and businesses grow...which brings us to the next word:

"Everybody." Why didn't we specify businesses or government or education or any other segment? Because no matter what communication you're talking about, at some level, it's a human being interacting with another human being. If you're thinking, what about business-to-business? Isn't that the hot ticket these days? The companies that win in the B2B war are going to be the companies that understand it's really about I2I -- Individual-to-Individual. The end customer is always -- always -- a human being.

If this statement brings up images of "all things to all people," or that we intend to gain every human being as our customer, consider this: When the market leader invents the future, everybody benefits. Even those who aren't their customers, yet.

Our Core Values: To guide us day-to-day, the promise includes Core Values. The root names for Verizon are "veritas" and "horizon." The basic idea: building upon our heritage to create the future. The "veritas" values are those we bring with us from our heritage -- the foundation upon which to build a new company. These values represent the best traditions of both GTE and Bell Atlantic:

Integrity: It's how we win the trust of stakeholders, and the primary value we need to deliver on our promises.

Respect: It's how we treat everyone we touch and how we value a diverse world.

The "horizon" values represent the attributes we need to deliver the future.

Imagination: It's more than innovation; it's creativity to find the right solution for customers and change the industry as a market leader;

Passion: It's more than speed and determination; it's what fuels our vision, and drives us -- and those around us -- toward our goal. But there is one value that bridges both our past and our future:

Service: It captures our reliability, quality focus and excellent customer performance as well as our heritage of community service. And it is as critical for the future as it is today.

The most important point about this two-tiered set of values is that we can't win without both. A company can be filled with passion and imagination, but if it can't deliver on its potential, keep its promises, and live up to its expectations, so what?

Our Core Goals: For our Core Goals, we decided on just one: To create the most respected brand in communications. The word "brand" includes much more than effective advertising. It's the promise we make to all our stakeholders and is the sum of millions of interactions we have each day with the people who touch our business. The word "respect" is really at the heart of our vision, because respect must be earned. To do that, you make a promise and keep it: Make a promise and keep it -- to all your stakeholders. That is at the heart of successful brand building.

Our Future: To be a truly great company, all four of our stakeholder groups have to draw real value from Verizon. These four groups will ultimately decide whether or not Verizon becomes the most respected brand in communications. All in all, we are making several huge promises:

	We're promising the world of communications that we will lead it.
	We're promising customers -- and all our stakeholders -- that they absolutely can rely on us.
	We're promising ourselves that we're going to settle for nothing less than greatness.

Our new company has the financial strength, the market positioning, the technology, the track record, the leadership, the strategy and -- most of all -- the people to live up to the Verizon Promise. We have what it takes to make this vision a reality. We can do it. Promise.