Muffled Ring
BellSouth still a broadband enigma
By Karen Brown
from the June 4, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
If the Baby Bells are the noisy, boisterous children of the old Ma Bell, BellSouth could be labeled the quiet one of the bunch. With far less publicity and after several broadband policy changes, the Atlanta-based company is starting a major DSL push in its nine-state local exchange region. Still, industry watchers are hard-pressed to predict a direction for the enigmatic RBOC, particularly about its ever-changing video strategy.
For BellSouth, the DSL goals are clear for 2001: driving up subscriber numbers, increasing network footprint and expanding broadband business offerings, according to Bill Story, vice president of marketing and product development for BellSouth's Broadband Services. The first part appears to be on track in the first quarter, where BellSouth racked up 88,000 new DSL subscribers for a total of 303,000--or 41 percent growth compared to fourth quarter 2000.
"We're on a very good growth curve, and actually March was our best growth month ever," Story says. "Our target here for the year is 600,000, and we are ahead of plan right now."
Plans are to have 70 percent of Bell South's 15 million lines upgraded to broadband-capable by the end of the year, up from 50 percent. That will bank on 6,000 DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs) deployed in remote terminals. By comparison, fellow RBOC and DSL leader SBC Communications has about 3,000 remote DSLAMs.
Not all of the upgrades are to extend reach; BellSouth also is making system and infrastructure upgrades to minimize outages. "We're trying to solve problems with DSL at the source, and obviously if you don't have a reliable network, it doesn't matter what you do ... you won't be providing good service," he says. "So we have focused a lot of efforts and energy and dollars on making the network more reliable. We feel like we've got that one pretty much licked."
Part of BellSouth's work involves replacing the entire e-mail system, starting this month. While the upgrade is aimed at improving reliability and adding numerous features not enabled by the existing system, "that is not a small task," admits Story.
On the enterprise side, BellSouth will be beefing up its service offerings starting with the static IP address product it launched April 16 in Atlanta. That soon will expand to Charlotte, N.C., Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., and New Orleans.
"That has been a void for us so far," Story says. "That's going to be a key feature in terms of getting to that business market, and it is something that up to a couple of weeks ago we didn't have in our portfolio."
The consumer side will see trials of some music, gaming, and video services beginning this summer, but Story demurs on specifics, saying BellSouth is "still trying to decide exactly which ones we are going to roll out and how big of a base of customers we will trial those with."
BellSouth also will follow an ILEC trend in changing what it charges to residential and wholesale customers. Beginning June 1, BellSouth cut the DSL discount offered to bundled voice and data residential customers in half, from $10 to $5. It also has gone to a flat rate $33 per line charge for wholesale providers.
For new customers, BellSouth forged a deal with provisioning provider BroadJump Inc., which will supply PC qualification tools customers can download from the BellSouth site to check their computer's system compatibility with DSL. It will also use BroadJump's customer management tools to help customers determine where an Internet problem exists, be it a page that refuses to load or a failure to connect.
"We've had a huge focus on self-installs and have been very successful there," Story says. "About 90 percent of our customers are choosing a self-install option and the vast majority of those are successfully installing without having to have us roll a truck. It helps us from a cost perspective, it helps the customer--they save money--and it makes things more convenient."
BellSouth is running an average of two to three weeks between self-install customers' orders and actual line provisioning. It has just invested in a new customer service management platform to speed hookups along, "but we have really focused on trying to get that installation interval down for the customers," Story said.
While DSL subscriber increases are a bright spot, the ILEC's strategy regarding video remains murky. BellSouth announced in December it was dismantling its fixed wireless video operations and reached an agreement with EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network to offer a special video service package. The change affects 80,000 of its video entertainment customers in New Orleans; Loisville, Ky.; Atlanta; Jacksonville, Datyona, Orlando, Lakeland and Fort Myers, Fla.
"Our goal is DSL, but that doesn't necessarily mean video over DSL," says spokesman Jeff Battcher.
The company will continue with its coaxial cable TV franchises in Atlanta, Jacksonville, Birmingham, Ala., and south Florida, which encompass a 400-home, fiber to the curb trial deployment in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, Ga. "We still feel entertainment is an important part of the bundle customers want," Battcher says.
But when BellSouth will come up with a new strategy to deploy video service across its entire territory is still being assessed, with no deadline or formal project in the works, Battcher says.
"We have always believed in the mosaic approach to delivering entertainment," he says. "We've always said we are looking at exploring other means of entertainment delivery and I think we are still exploring that."
With all that, it isn't surprising BellSouth remains an ILEC enigma for many analysts.
"I think there is certainly reason to wonder what's going on," says Adam Guglielmo, a DSL analyst for Telechoice. "The other ILECs pretty much have been more active as far as doing releases and talking about DSL. BellSouth has just been a bit quiet and they have been kind of following along."
While it may be more reserved in publicity, BellSouth has tended to do a lot of experimentation in the open. For example, its video products have ranged from traditional cable operations to brief attempts at MMDS and satellite television delivery.
"They've experimented with all kinds of things," Guglielmo says. "On the one hand I think that might show some sort of indecision or uncertainty, but on the other at least they are experimenting and trying to see things that work. And they seem to do that publicly, which is kind of interesting. They are trying all of these different methods for delivering video ... at least they are looking around."
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