Justin,
I appreciate your reply, but I have to confess that I finally broke down and took my laptop & BB Storm into a Verizon Wireless store last night to address the problems I was having.
Even then, it took almost two hours to troubleshoot the problem and we aren't sure the original cause.
The approach the technician took was to have me uninstall the 'VZAccess Manager' software (which subsequently caused my BlackBerry Desktop software to be uninstalled - don't ask me why that happened?) and then re-install both software packages. I had done this several times prior to their help, but to no avail. However, we also deleted the standard dial-up modem from the Device Manager (under the Control Panel) and did a hard re-boot of my BB Storm (ie. we removed the battery for 10 seconds).
Then, once I restarted the VZ Access Manager and reconnected the USB cable and my BB Storm, the software finally recognized my BB Storm as a dialup modem and loaded everything automatically. Voila! I was finally connected and could open my browser software.
Subsequently, I later disconnected everything and re-established another connection using Bluetooth between my laptop and my BB Storm. All I had to do for this was pair my laptop to my BB Storm, and then select a Bluetooth connection in the VZ Access Manager software to get it to detect the Bluetooth connection.
I write this solution in the hope that someone else who might be sufferring from a similar issue might benefit from my pain. Technology is a wonderful thing (when it works!!) but, why can't anything ever be straight forward and easy?