(UPDATED 6:30 p.m. with Verizon's statement.)

Verizon is apparently shutting down its public cloud as of April 12, along with its Reserved Performance and Marketplace services.

Verizon hasn't publicly announced this, but word has been spreading across Twitter, where security expert Kenn White posted the notice he received as a customer of the carrier.

Verizon would continue to offer private clouds and Verizon Cloud Storage.

In response to a query about public cloud, Verizon offered this statement:

As we continue to focus on the enterprise market, we’re discontinuing the niche cloud service that accepted individual credit card swipes on April 12. We have an enterprise-class range of cloud services including multi-tenant offerings such as cloud storage and virtual private cloud for enterprise and government customers. We’re making significant investments in our cloud platform in 2016.

Verizon's move continues an unraveling of cloud and data center plans among carriers. Reuters reported in January that Verizon was prepared to sell the data centers it had acquired with Terremark in 2011, and AT&T recently sold its managed services business to IBM.

Equipment vendors are toning down their public-cloud dreams as well. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) unplugged the Helion Public Cloud service on Jan. 31. And VMware appears to be focusing its vCloud Air more on services for other public clouds.

More and more, the public cloud looks as if it will be a contest among a few giants, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

The latter two are getting more aggressive about the cloud. Microsoft recently announced Azure Stack, which extends Azure functionality to an enterprise's on-premises cloud. And Google, through the acquisition of Bebop, has hired VMware founder Diane Greene to head its cloud operations.

In fact, Verizon might be getting out of the public cloud because it's found a partner in Google. CRN reported earlier this month that Verizon and Google are negotiating a possible partnership for hybrid clouds.

A cloud survey conducted in January by RightScale found that 57 percent of enterprises use AWS for public clouds.

Photo by Paul Downey on Flickr, cropped. CC2.0 license.