Verizon - "It's On" - but watch out for your genitals!

At the risk of really looking like a Verizon basher, I wanted to mention something I just noticed regarding a recent Verizon television ad.

The ad is for Verizon home phone service, and the theme is "It's on". The message of the ad tries to imply that during a power outage their subscriber's phones remain "on", while phones on their up and coming competitor's VoIP systems will presumably be "off".

It reminded me of a skit on one of my all time favorite shows Mr. Show with Bob and David. If you haven't seen this show you should really check it out on DVD. Anyway, the skit is about dueling grocery stores. The instigator store starts the ad duel with stating "we always have plenty of apples", slowly evolving to something along the lines of "your kids will never be abducted in our store." Meanwhile the other store has to jump through hoops to fight the implications of the ads - including an expensive child tracking security system including electronic child collars...

Back to the Verizon ad, all throughout the ad the Verizon customers are happily using their phones and we are supposed to assume that it wouldn't matter with Verizon whether or not the power was out. Of course I find it interesting that most if not all of the "customers" shown are using cordless phones (not mobile phones, cordless home phones). The last time I checked when the power goes out the base station powers off rendering cordless phones as useless as a phone plugged into a cable VoIP phone - a little oversight there maybe?

If you really cared of course you could buy a UPS (uninterruptable power supply) and plug your cordless into that to provide a stop gap for 30 minutes or more during a temporary outage, but of course then you could also do the same with your cable phone equipment - generally speaking your cable connection doesn't drop during a power outage any more than your phone would.

The one semblance of a point and advantage they have left is that if you used a corded phone you would in fact not require power whatsoever - landline corded phones are powered by the phone line itself.

I find it notable and interesting the minor angle Verizon has chosen in this case to spend its marketing dollars on.

For my dollar I vote for VoIP technology - its cheaper and more importantly its safe - it doesn't cause sterility, cancer, birth defects or genital shrinkage.