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Cable companies Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House say Verizon is illegally targeting customers with special deals when a customer initiates porting their telephone numbers from Verizon to a new carrier.

When a customer wants to change telephone carriers but keep the same telephone number, the new company must contact Verizon to request the number transfer.  The cable companies feel that this request constitutes "proprietary information" delivered to Verizon from themselves, and that Verizon is therefore prohibited from using the information for marketing. 

The cable companies allege that, while the request is being processed, Verizon is targeting these customers with "service discounts and gift cards of $50 to $200" in order to retain their business.  They maintain that Verizon must wait until the customer calls to cancel their Verizon service to make special deals and offers.

Verizon feels they're doing nothing wrong:

Verizon says constraints on the use of proprietary information were not meant to apply to phone-number transfers. In those cases, it says, the cable company is acting on the customer's behalf — that's how Verizon is notified to cancel the service. If it can't respond and try to retain the customer, cable would have an unfair advantage, Verizon says. Why? A cable customer who switches to Verizon for TV must call to cancel cable service, giving the cable company a chance to try to keep its customer.