Verizon Limits Length of Exclusive Phone Deals

Verizon Wireless said it will shorten the time it holds exclusive arrangements to offer popular cellphone models, allowing small wireless carriers to offer the devices as well. The largest US wireless provider by subscribers announced the change in a letter Friday to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have been pressuring the wireless industry to end exclusive handset arrangements such as AT&T's multi-year deal to carry Apple's iPhone in the US. Verizon said it will modify its exclusivity arrangements with handset manufacturers so that smaller wireless carriers -- those with 500,000 customers or less -- can offer the same handsets six months after Verizon. "Any new exclusively arrangement we enter with handset makers will last no longer than six months -- for all manufacturers and all devices," Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam wrote in the letter. However, McAdam defended the practice of locking up phones with exclusive deals, and said the new policy wouldn't apply to existing arrangements, such as Verizon's exclusive deal to carry the BlackBerry Storm. The Rural Cellular Association, whose members include about 100 small and medium-sized carriers, said it was encouraged by Verizon Wireless's offer to limit new exclusive handset deals but the offer was inadequate