Verizon Enterprise Solutions wants to put insurance companies in the driving seat when it comes to selling advanced in-car services to users, but may be facing an uphill battle to convince the industry to go its way.

Speaking at last week's Insurance Telematics event in Chicago, George Ayers, VP of global sales for Verizon Telematics, said that offering services such as automatic roadside assistance, vehicle location, driving diagnostics, geo-fencing, and automated maintenance enables insurers to develop deeper and more positive relationships with their customers. By contrast, Ayers said, UBI is just another form of price competition, in which insurance companies use telematics devices installed in vehicles -- often temporarily -- to deliver insurance price cuts to safer drivers.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has competitive reasons for this thinking: With its acquisition of Hughes Telematics, Verizon added in-car devices to its technology stable, and would like to capitalize on those capabilities in the years before car manufacturers automatically install such gear in every new car -- a time that Ayers himself admits is coming within the next decade. (See Verizon Spends $612M for a Future in Cars.)

Both AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) and Sprint Corp. (NYSE: S) are competing in the insurance telematics space as well, offering insurance companies a range of services from basic transport to logistics -- distribution and tracking of the in-car devices -- and data analytics. Both companies were exhibiting at the Insurance Telematics event. Every wireless carrier hopes to compete in providing wireless services to connected cars. But Verizon's $612 million investment in Hughes Telematics and its more aggressive marketing efforts signal a different level of ambition.

"Verizon is certainly focused more on this market than AT&T and Sprint," said Thilo Koslowski, VP of automotive vehicle ICT at Gartner Inc. :

Verizon is working that angle as well, Ayers said in an interview with Light Reading. Car dealers, in particular, are a target market because they stand to increase their share of car maintenance and repair revenue if they are providing the service that can remotely diagnose vehicle problems and, sometimes, even remotely fix those problems with software upgrades. Verizon can get them into that business quickly with its wireless services and in-car devices.

But Ayers sees the insurance industry as a near-term key, for as long as there are many cars on the road that aren't connected by their manufacturers, which will be for some time yet.

"As we wait for auto manufacturers to give connectivity to customers, insurers can step into the breach," he said. "Instead of paying for collision damage or being a backstop to issues I have as a customer, they can get out in front" and offer pro-active solutions to challenges both consumers and businesses face with their "fleets."

State Farm Insurance has already launched its Drive Safe and Save program, which uses In-Drive devices from Verizon Telematics, along with General Motors On-Star and Ford Sync factory-installed options. Subscribers get a five percent discount for enrolling and then can earn additional discounts for safe driving, as assessed by the on-board device. They can access driving reports for each enrolled car online. In addition, a device installed in the driver's visor enables one-touch access to emergency services or roadside assistance, as well as options for hands-free talking packages.

The potential for other services is considerable, said Ayers, including crash and alarm notification, stolen vehicle location, speech recognition, route assistance, concierge services, traffic, weather, friend finders, geo-fencing, a roadside assist toolbar and maintenance.

"There are various business models for any of these, but we know that consumers will pay extra for connected stuff," he said. Geo-fencing, for example, would send a text alert to the subscriber's phone when a teen driver or an aging parent driver takes the connected car outside expected boundaries.

By contrast, basic UBI doesn't establish an ongoing relationship but instead sets up a temporary ability for consumers to reduce their insurance cost and nothing else.

Roger Lanctot, assistant director of the Automotive Multimedia & Communications Service at Strategy Analytics Inc. , said insurance companies may not want to dramatically change the way they do business, but will likely have little choice. He said:

For Verizon Enterprise Solutions, the telematics piece of the business is only one part of its efforts to get more deeply engaged with the insurance industry, said Stephen Busateri, global principal manager for insurance and finance.

"We can help them modernize the insurance value chain," he said. "Today it is all organized around claims. But we can help them understand their customers better, and do a better job of managing information and messages across multiple market channels -- the web, agents, retail stories, etc."

Succeeding at the kind of service Verizon wants the insurance companies to adopt will take a prolonged focus, said Gartner analyst Koslowski, and he isn't convinced that persistent will happen. He continued:

— Carol Wilson, Editor-at-Large, Light Reading