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This story comes up every so often, and obviously nothing has come of it yet. It’s easy to associate Verizon Wireless with Verizon Communications, the company that got big in the landline business a decade or two ago. That’s only 55 percent correct, though. The other 45 percent of Verizon Wireless is owned by Vodafone Group, the European cellular provider. Once again, Verizon has expressed interest in buying Vodafone out of their share, according to Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. He thinks that Verizon does all the work in the wireless division, and would like to start seeing all of the profits.

There’s not really much to this report. As mentioned, it comes up every once in a while, and then dies a few days later. So why do we bring it to the front now? Well, something has changed since last time.

Next month, Vodafone is set to seat a new CEO, Vittirio Colao. I’m not going to pretend to know anything about the man, other than he’s not the same as the last guy. So, maybe he wants to take Vodafone in a different direction and sever its cross-Atlantic ties.

Then again, if Vodafone is seeing 45 percent of the profits for doing zero percent of the work, well, then that’s a pretty sweet deal. Would you sell out your portion of that? Didn’t think so. As it has many times in the past, we should see this story drift off into the sunset.

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