In the past few years, the telecommunications company has been shedding slow-growth businesses as it focuses on its wireless and FiOS businesses. While the deals have served Verizon well, they haven’t worked out as well for those acquiring the assets–at least in three cases.

Wednesday, Frontier Communications (FTR) embarked on this path. The rural telecommunications operator agreed to acquire 4.8 million access lines in 14 states from Verizon in a deal valued at $8.6 billion. Will Frontier face the same fate? Perhaps not.

“The problems with those deals had nothing to do with Verizon or how the deals were structured. The companies had operational problems after the deals closed,” a Verizon spokesman said.

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Verizon (VZ) reported net income of $3.21 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, the company earned 63 cents a share. Analysts had expected 59 cents a share. It added 1.3 million new wireless customers, that number bolstered by the purchase of Alltel, and ended the quarter with 86.6 million mobile subscribers. Verizon’s FiOS fiber network is also doing quite well. It added 299,000 new subscribers, pushing the total to 2.2 million. (Click on graph below to enlarge.)

Quite a performance given the current economic climate.

And what of those rumors of an iPhone deal with Apple (AAPL)? During a conference call to discuss earnings, Verizon COO Denny Strigl declined comment but didn’t rule such a deal out: “We’re always open to discussions with any supplier,” he said, adding, “We have no announcements to make relative to Apple today. Historically we haven’t been dependent on any one device. We’ve been well-positioned with high-value customers.”

Translation: Do we look like a company in need of a Jesus phone?

No. I guess not.

With 1.6 million iPhones sold in its first quarter and 40 percent of those activated during that time new to its network, AT&T (T) sure does, though. Zing….

Great news for Vonage (VG), which has been tormented by a barrage of costly legal battles and set upon by new and powerful rivals. The company’s net loss shrank to $8.96 million, or 6 cents a share, from a loss of $72.3 million, or 47 cents, in the year-earlier quarter.

Sadly for Vonage, the company’s Q1 loss isn’t the only thing that shrank. Subscriber growth did as well. The company signed up just 30,000 new subscribers in the quarter, a big decline from a year earlier when it added nearly 166,000 subscribers. Worse, turnover rate increased to 3.3% from 3% in the fourth quarter.

Still, Vonage is a bit healthier than it’s been for some time now. So while it may not exactly be on the road to recovery, it’s at least crawling in its general direction. To that end, the company’s inked a deal to resell Covad’s DSL service under the Vonage Broadband name. An interesting idea, in that it will allow Vonage to bundle a broadband offering with its Internet telephony services like most other phone and cable companies on the planet. But DSL? Really? At a time when Verizon (VZ) is expanding its FiOS fiber-optic service and Comcast (CMCSA) is boosting the speed of its high-tier cable broadband?

The company’s first-quarter earnings met Wall Street expectations today thanks to strong growth in its wireless and FIOS home fiber-optic services businesses. With a 10% increase in first-quarter profit, and revenues that rose 5.5% to $23.83 billion, Verizon’s business would appear to be more recession-proof than others. “We’re really not seeing a change in trends,” Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said in an interview. “How many people are really going to drop their wireless phone?”

Not very many. Verizon added 1.5 million subscribers to its mobile business during the quarter. That said, there are plenty of folks willing to drop their landlines. Verizon wire-line subscribers declined 8.2% to 40.52 million from 44.15 million in the first quarter of 2007.

The company’s first-quarter earnings met Wall Street expectations today thanks to strong growth in its wireless and FIOS home fiber-optic services businesses. With a 10% increase in first-quarter profit, and revenues that rose 5.5% to $23.83 billion, Verizon’s business would appear to be more recession-proof than others. “We’re really not seeing a change in trends,” Chief Financial Officer Doreen Toben said in an interview. “How many people are really going to drop their wireless phone?”

Not very many. Verizon added 1.5 million subscribers to its mobile business during the quarter. That said, there are plenty of folks willing to drop their landlines. Verizon wire-line subscribers declined 8.2% to 40.52 million from 44.15 million in the first quarter of 2007.

Some subscribers to the company’s FiOS fiber-optic Internet service are finding themselves redirected to Verizon’s own advertising-laden search-engine page when they mistype a URL or query a nonexistent Internet site–even if Verizon’s search isn’t set as their default. Verizon says it’s only trying to help, and to be fair, it does offer subscribers–who never “opted in” in the first place– the chance to opt out by changing the DNS settings in their routers.

Still, it’s all a bit too reminiscent of VeriSign’s Site Finder, a service that hijacked people who misspelled domain names and sent them to a Web directory full of advertising. Which, given the hue and cry over Net neutrality, isn’t the sort of memory you want to be conjuring up as a major telecom provider.

And like the technologies themselves, digital jargon changes and expands all the time. Just when you thought you’d mastered stuff like RAM (computer memory) and GSM (the cellphone technology invented in Europe), new terms pop up like weeds on your lawn.

So here’s a quick and dirty glossary designed to make holiday shopping for the latest tech products feel less like taking the SATs.

Computers

Some of the newest terminology to know when you’re shopping for a computer, whether it be a Windows PC or an Apple Macintosh, involves the processor, the chip that’s the brain of the box. Until recently, most consumer computers had a single processor. Now it’s common to find them with so-called dual cores, which in effect means two processors packaged into one chip. Two cores won’t make your word processing or email go any faster, but they do potentially give you more horsepower for such heavy-duty tasks as gaming or video editing. I say “potentially,” because to make the most of a dual-core processor, you need software that sends some work to each core, and most programs are not yet designed to do that.

The labeling of these new processors is also confusing. Intel called its first consumer laptop dual-core chip the “Core Duo”; now there’s a second generation known as the “Core 2 Duo.” (In techland, apparently, the “2 Duo” moniker is assumed to be crystal clear.) And there are still some single-core Intel processors, dubbed “Core Solo.”

For laptops in general, one of the latest terms you’ll encounter is “ExpressCard,” which refers to the new version of that slot on the side of the machine into which you can pop a wireless receiver or some other add-on. For years these slots have adhered to a standard called “PC Card,” but the latest laptops are showing up with slots that follow the new ExpressCard standard. Worse yet for confused consumers, it comes in two flavors: a narrower one called ExpressCard/34, and a wider one called ExpressCard/54. And naturally, neither can accept cards designed for the older, PC Card standard.

Cellphones

One hardly knows where to begin when talking about cellphone jargon. But an obvious source of confusion is the baffling nomenclature being given to the various new high-speed cellphone networks that can transmit a wide assortment of material — music, video clips and web sites — to phones at speeds rivaling home broadband.

If you’re shopping for a phone at Verizon or Sprint, the high-speed capability is called “EVDO” or “EV-DO” (which stands for Evolution Data Only or Evolution Data Optimized). At Cingular, it’s known as “HSDPA” (for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access).

Since T-Mobile doesn’t have a network in this speed class, salespeople there will brag instead about “EDGE” (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution), which, despite its aspirational name, is a much slower technology.

TV

Buying a television used to be simple. No more. There’s a whole new vocabulary for digital TV shopping. It’s too expansive to cover completely in this space, but here are a few select terms.

In addition to the familiar plasma and LCD (liquid crystal display) sets, which have an expensive digital panel at the front, there’s now a third type of screen, called a “microdisplay.” This is actually a rear-projection television, although much skinnier than the old behemoths. There are three main microdisplay types. Each uses a different sort of very small digital circuit in the rear of the set to generate the picture, which is then projected onto the large screen at the front. And naturally, each has its own jargony name. The first, called “DLP” (digital light processing), uses a special chip loaded with minuscule mirrors. The second, confusingly called “LCD,” uses a tiny LCD chip. The third, “LCoS” (liquid crystal on silicon), is sort of a hybrid of the other two, in that it uses both liquid crystals and mirrors.

And don’t forget the digital video recorder — the now almost mandatory add-on used to record and save programs on hard disks inside cable and satellite receivers or inside a stand-alone unit — which unfortunately goes by two names. Sometimes it’s called a “DVR” (digital video recorder) and sometimes a “PVR” (personal video recorder), but really, they’re the same thing. You might even hear the technology referred to as “TiVo,” which is actually the best-known brand of digital video recorder. Think of TiVo as the Kleenex of DVRs — its name is sometimes used as a generic term for the whole category.

Wireless

Wi-Fi wireless networks are now pretty familiar. Many people even know they come in two main speeds, designated by letters. The “b” variety, which was the first version to gain public acceptance, was succeeded by the “g” variety, which is faster and backwards-compatible with “b.”

Nice and simple, right? Not for long. Chaos has come to the Wi-Fi world in the form of a new standard,”n,” which is supposedly even faster than “g” and, more important, offers longer range. The problem is, the engineering committee that sets such standards has been taking forever to certify “n,” so companies have begun selling Wi-Fi gear that purports to use the “n” standard in some form but may not be compatible with it when it finally emerges. Last year there were “pre-n” products, which used some parts of the emerging standard; this year there are “draft-n” products, based on a draft of the proposed “n” standard. Stay tuned for the real thing.

But the most important Wi-Fi term of the moment is “MIMO,” short for multiple-input multiple-output. This is a technique that can greatly improve range and speed by capturing formerly stray parts of a wireless signal and merging them. It is expected to be a key component of the “n” standard, but is already in some “g” products, as well as in the “pre-n” and “draft-n” products.

Broadband

There are two main types of high-speed Internet service: DSL (digital subscriber line) is sold by phone companies, while cable modem service is sold by cable companies. Most people know these terms.

But now there’s a third type, called “fiber optic,” being sold in some parts of the country. This technology uses glass fibers, lit up by a laser and connected directly to your home. (Some other systems use fiber under the street, but not running right up to the house.) The best-known brand of fiber-to-the-home broadband service is Verizon’s “FiOS,” which can deliver TV channels as well as the Internet.

All broadband service providers boast about their speed, and they tend to do so in techie jargon. Slower broadband is measured in kilobits per second, abbreviated as “kbps.” Faster speeds are clocked as megabits per second, or “mbps.” (Note that these terms end in bit, not byte. The latter ending is normally used as a measure of storage capacity, not speed.) One megabit equals 1,000 kilobits. So a DSL line that tops out at 768 kilobits per second, for example, isn’t nearly as fast as one that registers three megabits per second.

Music

Almost everybody knows that MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3) is the most common format for digital music files. But what is AAC? And how about WMA?

All of the above are compressed formats, meaning they take a song that would occupy lots of space on a disk and squeeze it down to a fraction of its original size while trying to preserve the sound. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an industry-standard music-compression format favored by Apple, while WMA (Windows Media Audio) is a proprietary music-compression format that is owned and used by Microsoft. Which of the three you prefer depends on your taste.

Both AAC and WMA are available in two versions. One is an “open” version, which gets created when consumers convert their CDs into these digital formats, and imposes no restrictions on usage. The second is an encrypted, or copy-protected, version, which includes code that restricts how often and under what circumstances the song can be played or copied. Songs sold at Apple’s iTunes Music Store are in the encrypted version of AAC, while songs sold by music services that use Microsoft software are sold in the encrypted version of WMA, meaning there are limits to what you can do with these files.

Here are a few questions about computers I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability. This week my mailbox contained questions about completely erasing a PC, installing Verizon’s Fios Internet service, and using a Firefox Web browser on an iMac.

If you have a question, send it to me at mossberg@wsj.com, and I may select it to be answered here in Mossberg’s Mailbox.

I am giving my PC to my sister and I would like to completely erase my files from the hard drive. How can I do this?

What you need to do is wipe out the files in a way that is more thorough than merely deleting them in the standard manner. This process is often called “wiping” files, and makes the files impossible, or at least very difficult, to recover. It works by overwriting the portion of the hard disk formerly occupied by a file’s data with nonsense characters.

You could format the disk, but that also would wipe out the operating system, which would require your sister to buy and install a new copy. So you need a program that wipes out only the folders and files you target. On an Apple Macintosh, this capability is built in. You just move the files to the trash and then select “Secure Empty Trash” instead of the usual “Empty Trash” command.

On Windows, you need add-on software. There are many programs that do this, but one that I have tested and can recommend is Window Washer, which is available at webroot.com for $30. You can find others by doing a Web search for “file wipe” or by doing a similar search at download.com.

If you install the new high-speed Verizon Fios Internet service you recently reviewed, do you have to upgrade your wireless network?

It depends. Verizon will supply you with either a wired or wireless router, the box that transmits your Internet connection. If your current Wi-Fi network is slower than the maximum speed of Fios, you should take the Verizon wireless router. For instance, if you have the 15 megabits per second version of Fios, but only have a Wi-Fi “b” type network, which works at a maximum of 11 mbps, take the Verizon wireless router and allow Verizon to install it in place of your current one. The Verizon wireless model works on the newer “g” flavor of Wi-Fi, which can handle speeds of as much as 54 mbps.

You also will need to make sure that all the PCs you are planning to connect wirelessly to Fios have “g” type Wi-Fi connections. If even one of them has “b” equipment, it will drag down the whole wireless network to the lower speed of “b.” (This doesn’t affect wired connections to computers.)

However, if your wireless router is fast enough, and you like it, you can keep it with Fios service. I did, because I am using the Belkin “Pre-N” router, which has better speed and range than any “g” router I’ve seen. I just took the plain old wired router from Verizon and plugged my Belkin wireless router into it. Others have dispensed with the Verizon gear entirely, and just plugged the Fios cable directly into their wireless routers. The main downside here is that Verizon says the routers it installs contain special software that can help diagnose Fios problems.

Can I use the Firefox browser on my iMac? I am running version 9.1 of the operating system.

Unfortunately, no. While Firefox works on the Mac, it requires the newer Apple operating system, Mac OS X, which was introduced in 2001. Firefox requires Mac OS X 10.1, at a minimum. Your computer has an entirely different, older, and much less capable operating system, which Apple has pretty much abandoned.

By the way, for Windows users, Firefox requires Windows 98 or higher. For both platforms, there also are minimum hardware requirements. Firefox also runs on the Linux operating system, and has minimum requirements on that platform as well. Requirements for all platforms are at: www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/system-requirements.

* * *

Because of the volume of e-mail I receive, I can’t routinely answer individual questions by e-mail, or consult on individual problems or purchasing decisions. I read all questions I receive and select three each week to answer in the column.

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com

For instance, Verizon’s entry-level DSL service, at 768 kilobits per second for downloads and 128 kilobits per second for uploads, is considered high-speed here. But in Japan and Korea, families can buy moderately priced Internet service measured in the tens of megabits per second. They get a race car, while Americans are stuck with a bicycle.

A megabit per second (mbps) connection moves about 1,000 times as much data every second as a kilobit per second (kbps) connection. A service running at 10 megabits per second is more than 13 times as fast as Verizon’s base DSL service. All such services have two modes: downstream, for downloading Web pages, email and files; and upstream, for uploading email or files. Generally, Internet providers offer much faster downstream speeds than upstream speeds.

Even the faster common U.S. broadband offerings, like Comcast’s $42.95 a month basic cable-modem service, which delivers 6 mbps downstream and 384 kbps upstream, are ridiculously slow compared with the Asian offerings.

But now, Verizon is offering Americans in certain parts of the country a new, much faster Internet service for only a little more than Comcast charges for its basic service. This new product, called Fios, offers 15 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $50 a month, or $45 a month if you use Verizon for your telephone service.

There are also two other Fios plans: 5 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream for $40 a month; and 30 mbps downstream and 5 mbps upstream for $200 a month. Both also are discounted if you also use Verizon phone service.

I had Fios installed in my house in July, and I’ve been comparing it with Comcast’s basic cable-modem service. I have been pleased with Fios’s speed and reliability, which are true to Verizon’s claims. On some tasks, it is markedly faster than Comcast. And on my laptops connected via a Wi-Fi wireless network, which tends to degrade Internet speeds, the speed increase has been especially noticeable.

This speed boost, however, isn’t the kind of transforming event that people experience when they first move from dial-up to broadband; there’s a limit to the discernible speed increase you can get when downloading Web pages and email — the two most common Internet activities.

So far, Fios is available to fewer than three million homes and business in selected cities and towns in just 15 states, including the Maryland suburb of Washington where I live. Soon, Fios will have competition. Comcast has been working on its own higher-speed solution, and I expect Comcast to match or exceed the Fios downstream speed in these parts of the country where Fios is available in the next few months.

I chose the middle of three Fios plans Verizon offers — 15 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream. It took two visits from Verizon crews to install my Fios service — one to lay a fiber-optic cable to my house, and another to install the indoor electronic gear. The service hasn’t been down for even a minute since it was turned on.

I ran a rigorous series of tests comparing Fios with the Comcast basic cable-modem service, using an Internet speed test site accessed from a hard-wired Windows PC. My Fios service repeatedly was measured at just over 15 mbps downstream and around 1.8 mbps upstream. The Comcast service clocked in at a mere 2.3 mbps downstream and around 360 kbps upstream.

Comcast says I should have gotten nearly 6 mbps downstream in my tests, and that my poor test results are likely due to some problem unique to my house. But even if I had gotten, say, 5.5 mbps downstream with Comcast, Fios would have still won hands down.

On my Windows and Mac laptops connected wirelessly via Wi-Fi in distant parts of my home, test speeds jumped from under 1 mbps with Comcast to around 8 mbps with Fios, a huge improvement.

I also did some real-world comparisons. I downloaded a 65.8 megabyte file with Fios in just 42 seconds, compared with nearly seven minutes with Comcast. An uploading test was even more impressive. I uploaded five digital photos, totaling 10.2 megabytes in size, to an online photo service. Fios did this job in just over eight minutes, while Comcast took one hour and 22 minutes.

Streaming video clips from the Internet were much smoother, and suffered fewer hiccups, with Fios than they did with Comcast, especially on my wireless laptops. But Fios wasn’t markedly faster at fetching Web sites, or downloading email without large attachments.

I consider Fios a good service and a good bargain. If you are a heavy Internet user, and you can get it, I recommend you do so. That is especially true if you use the Internet over a wireless network, and stream a lot of videos, or download and upload lots of files. If you are a light user, just surfing the Web and doing email, a slower service will do fine.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com