According to the New York Times, Verizon is making a pre-emptive strike in the city's broadband Internet market, offering a watered-down version of its DSL service at half-price ($14.95). The new DSL service will be 10 times faster than dial-up, but only about one-fourth that of Verizon's main DSL service, which costs $29.99. The half-price offering is intended as a way to entice dial-up Internet users to make the move to broadband -- and to win over these customers before cable providers snare them:

"Every dial-up customer we convert to D.S.L. takes one customer off the table for cable modem. We have a price for every budget."

In a related announcement, the company unveiled plans to form a marketing alliance with Yahoo, which has created a Web portal for Verizon customers.