There’s been a lot of industry buzz recently around Verizon’s announcement they are in the process of shutting down their email business. Most in the email industry knew this was coming, but with no solid details the ‘when’ remained a bit fuzzy. Even now, the official FAQs don’t provide a concrete timetable for the shutdown, and it seems likely it will happen in phases.

According to MediaPost, Verizon account holders have been receiving email notifications informing them of a 30-day deadline to take action. These actions include choosing to keep their verizon.net address (serviced by AOL going forward) or migrating to another service provider altogether. If no action is taken during that 30 days, the customer loses access to the account and all associated services.

Once account access is terminated, the email account is subject to Verizon’s typical account deletion timeline of 180 days of inactivity. The FAQs don’t specify, however, if the 6-month countdown starts from the most recent login or from the end of the 30-day window when access is terminated.

Verizon spokesman Raymond McConville estimates that, of its 4.5 million total accounts, 2.3 million have been active within the past 30 days – though that’s no guarantee they’ll take action on the shutdown notice.

What does that mean for senders? Sometime within the next 6 months you’re likely to see a large portion of your verizon.net subscriber addresses disappear as over 2 million Verizon email accounts are deleted. Most senders don’t have a huge component of verizon.net addresses, but it’s certainly a good idea to check now so you’re not taken by surprise by an abnormal bounce rate.

– BG