It’s Official: Qwest Now Pushing Verizon Wireless

A while ago, I posted that Qwest intends on selling Verizon Wireless service instead of operating as an mobile virtual network operator of Sprint. As of yesterday, you can migrate your “Qwest Wireless” service to Verizon–complete with a “get out of contract free” provision.

Really, though, you’re not getting out of a contract entirely. You’ll just be signing a new 2 year agreement with Verizon Wireless, particularly if you want any discounts buying a new handset–which you will need to do. Eventually, you’ll get combined billing and a bundle discount similar to what you get with Qwest Wireless, but today, that’s not entirely the case.

It also sounds like two cool features of the current Qwest Wireless service will be gone: free calls between your landline and home phone as well as “one number” service (one number for both landline and mobile). The push-to-talk service will be gone, but that doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.

Of course, this is a non-starter for me, personally: I don’t live in Qwest’s service area and I don’t want wireless service from Verizon Wireless–at least until they drop CDMA and go with a worldwide standard like GSM.