What does "Cellco Partnership Dba Verizon Wireless" mean?

I've seen that before. I believe that is what comes up for former Alltel customers before Verizon partially acquired them.

Dba stand for "doing business as"

For all intents and purposes, you're on Verizon. The airlines do this all the time with regional carriers. ExpressJet operates a lot of things for United as their Express line. So you'll see "ExpressJet dba United Airlines" when you use their flights (basically all the Embraer-model flights)...

If you had a problem you'd call United in the above example.

Leonard1818 said:

Thanks, so chances are that phone number is on an independent carrier network then...

Click to expand...

Nope, has nothing to do with it. Cellco Partnership is Verizon Wireless's official, legal business name. It is not an MVNO and it doesn't have anything to do with being on a different network.

Also: Be aware that if the person has ported their number out to a different carrier, telcodata.us and similar databases DO NOT reflect this. They only shows the carrier that was originally assigned that number, and don't track ports. So, all you know for sure is that it originally started out as a Verizon number. It could still be, or it could be ported out to some other carrier.

Example: my cell number, which I've had since 1999, was originally on Sprint. Since then it's been ported to Verizon, then to Cingular (as it was called back then), then T-Mobile, then back to Sprint, and then to AT&T. But if you look it up, it's still listed as a Sprint number.

I have seen that before, anyone can tell me?

LarryAB1950 said:

I have seen that before, anyone can tell me?

Click to expand...

I know this is late. As Mrbrown posted back in 2013 it’s the doing business as. I work for VZW so all my checks and w2s say Cellco Partnership. Some things list it as the full Cellco Partnership dba Verizon Wireless. For a cell phone number it just means the number was originated from VZW regardless of what network it’s currently on.

This if from Dun & Bradstreet (business financials)

Cellco Partnership​

VERIZON WIRELESS
1 Verizon Way
Basking Ridge, NJ, 07920-1025 United States
(908) 306-7000
www.verizonwireless.com
Company Type: Partnership Subsidiary