Verizon Launches iobi Home

Verizon (www.verizon.com) is making life easier for New Yorkers by putting a home phone "control panel" right on the screen of their personal computers. It's iobi (www.verizon.com/iobi) Home (pronounced eye-OH'-bee), the brand-new, industry-leading service that lets consumers be two places at once. 

An example: You're at work and your child's school calls your home to tell you that you forgot to send in the signed permission slip for a class field trip. How nice to have a message pop up on your office computer or a text message sent to your wireless phone that the school called; then, on your computer, be able to play with a single click the voice message leaving the school fax number.

"Iobi has the potential to underpin a strategic transformation of Verizon from its traditional mission of 'pipes to the people' to 'power to the people,' giving customers much more control over their communications, information and entertainment services and devices," said Rob Rich, executive vice president-Yankee Group.

Now iobi Home is now available to Verizon residential customers throughout the five boroughs of New York - Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island - for $7.95 per month.

erizon is introducing iobi Home at DigitalLife 2004 - the consumer electronics trade show, to be held at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Oct 14 through 17.

The easy-to-use iobi Home communications system can be accessed in any one of three ways - through the iobi Home client software on a personal computer connected to the Internet; through the iobi Web site, which can be accessed on the Internet from any computer; or by telephone using a voice-recognition portal.

In addition to these features, iobi Home offers a call log, address book, calendar, text messaging, e-mail messaging, SuperPages and personal directory number lookup, always-on weather display, and access to calling-party maps. Broadband service is not required; iobi Home works with dial-up access on regular phone lines, making the most advanced call-management features available to everyone.