Putting corporate values the test. (Keynote).

The place where we were supposed to meet for this conference, Windows on the World, no longer exists. It simply vanished, along with so much else, that tragic morning of September 11. Now we talk of life before and after.

I'm here to speak about corporate responsibility and community commitment.

Before, I would have focused on what Verizon is doing to help eliminate illiteracy and the digital divide, and how we started Verizon Volunteers for our employees. I would have spoken of the Verizon Promise, staling our core purpose to bring the benefits of communications to everyone. Powerful, but just words on a page.

In the world after September 11, we've seen our idea of corporate responsibility and community commitment tested. Our first thought was for our 2,200 employees in the twin towers and at l40 West Side Highway, just north of Tower 2. Once evacuated, we focused on the damage to our switching facility at l40 West, badly damaged as the towers collapsed. Though evacuated, the systems continued to operate until late in the day, when flooding overcame the power

panels and cable vaults.

Altogether, 10 cellular towers were disrupted or destroyed, along with 300,000 voice lines and 3.6 million data circuits, affecting 14,000 business and 20,000 residence customers. In minutes we set up a command center uptown to ensure 911 and police, fire and rescue communications were running.

No disaster plan could have fully readied us for the magnitude of what happened, and no emergency command center could have directed the actions of everyone who must act on a dime in such chaotic conditions. Those decisions get made by instinct -- and that's where organizational values get tested. Our instincts led to three priorities: take care of our employees, take care of our customers, take care of our community.

Of the 500 employees in the towers, five were missing. We also lost one at the Pentagon.

We provided grief counselors and employee assistance programs. We held videoconferences to update people on the restoration effort and, at the appropriate time, to refocus them on the business. We talked to people, face to face.

The second priority: customers. On Wednesday the 12th, we met with representatives of the New York Stock Exchange, the major brokerage houses, the SEC and the New York Federal Reserve to plot the restoration effort. It would involve restoring 2 million data circuits and 1.5 million phone lines in less than a week, a job that would ordinarily take a month or two.

For six days, around the clock, hundreds of telephone technicians, working alongside rescue workers, laid cable in open trenches, pulled phone lines through windows seven stories high, hand-cleaned equipment covered by soot. They figured out right there how to rebuild the entire communications system of lower Manhattan, then restored service to the 34,000 affected businesses and residences.

It's hard to talk about any good coming of such a horrible event. We knew we had to bring the lifeline of communications to everyone, and this animated our entire response. The Verizon Promise didn't tell us what to do every minute in every situation, but it did give us the goal and the inspiration.