NEW YORK, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ — Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ)

President and Chief Operating Officer Dennis F. Strigl today informed the

Board of Directors that he intends to retire from the company by the end of

2009, after 41 years in the communications industry.

Strigl is responsible for the operations of Verizon’s network-based businesses

- Verizon Wireless, Verizon Telecom and Verizon Business — as well as Verizon

Services Operations, which provides financial, real estate and other services

to all of the company’s operations. He is widely recognized as a key

architect of the wireless industry, and of Verizon Wireless, where he served

as president and chief executive officer until assuming his current role in

2007.

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New Hosted Services Delivery Platform Reduces Carriers’ Capital Investment and

Accelerates Application Delivery Time to Market

ATLANTA and CHICAGO – September 1, 2009 – Movius Interactive Corporation, a global leader in messaging, collaboration and mobile media solutions, and Neutral Tandem, Inc. (Nasdaq:TNDM), a leading provider of tandem interconnection services, today announced a strategic joint offering to enable telecommunications carriers to reduce the risk and accelerate the speed of delivering new interactive messaging applications to market.

Under the terms of the new arrangement, Movius and Neutral Tandem will provide messaging services on a hosted basis to wireless, wireline, cable and broadband operators. Movius’ advanced suite of messaging, collaboration and interactive mobile media applications will be hosted in Neutral Tandem’s next-generation, IP compatible, interconnection network. With the new Movius/Neutral Tandem Hosted Service Delivery Platform, carriers can offer full-featured messaging solutions without the upfront capital normally required.

“Today’s carriers are faced with more