Bell Atlantic CEO touts broadband
By Marc Ferranti
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 10:50 AM PT, Oct 7, 1999
NEW YORK -- Bell Atlantic Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ivan Seidenberg on Thursday singled out expansion of broadband services and infrastructure as the company's most important goal, and said that telecommunications megamergers can be good, though not always, for businesses and consumers.
"We want to be your preferred broadband supplier," Seidenberg said in a keynote speech Thursday here at the Internet World trade show. "Broadband is Bell Atlantic's single most important initiative."
In its current coverage area, a major portion of the East coast, Bell Atlantic will roll out broadband Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) capability to 10 million of its 22 million customers by the end of the first quarter next year, and 20 million of its customers by the end of next year, he said. Though Bell Atlantic is intent on growing the broadband business in its current region, the pending merger with GTE, due to be finalized in the first quarter next year, also will help Bell Atlantic expand broadband coverage throughout the United States and abroad, he said. After the merger, GTE and Bell Atlantic together will offer DSL broadband capabilities to three-quarters of the major markets in the United States, he said.
As another example of how Bell Atlantic intends to deliver high-speed data services throughout the country, Seidenberg also noted that the company Thursday morning announced a deal with Metromedia Fiber Network (MFN) that will give Bell Atlantic access to MFN's high-bandwidth infrastructure across the United States.
For wireless data, the merger of the wireless assets of Bell Atlantic and U.K. company Vodafone AirTouch will further fuel Bell Atlantic's ability to get mobile customers hooked up to the Net, he said. The new company will combine Bell Atlantic Mobile, AirTouch Cellular, PrimeCo Personal Communications, and AirTouch Paging businesses. It will also include the cellular and personal communications services assets of GTE.
Asked whether such giant mergers will mean fewer competitors and fewer options for customers, Seidenberg said not all megamergers are bad, per se, for users. "We're dealing with global businesses, and we're dealing with massive investments for broadband," he said in remarks to the press after his keynote. "You need scale to make capital investments like that, and you need scale on a global basis to service global business."
With the need for scale, there will be "three or four or five major [telecom] competitors in the U.S.," he said. He added, however, that "three or four competitors in any area gives customers a pretty good choice." In addition, he said, with the need for telecom companies to generate greater revenue to make the kind of capital investments needed to expand broadband services, "no one market will support more than three or five competitors."
However, Seidenberg also pointed to the company's announcement Wednesday with 3Com, whereby the companies will together offer "a DSL-in-a-box" package in retail outlets in the northeastern U.S., to illustrate that the company is growing "both organically as well as through mergers," he said.
Asked about the proposed merger between MCI WorldCom and Sprint, announced this week, Seidenberg said that deal "will have to be closely examined." That deal concentrates both Internet infrastructure and long-distance services in a way that the Bell Atlantic-GTE merger does not, he said. The MCI WorldCom-Sprint deal, "in its current form," is detrimental for competition, he said.
In addition to broadband infrastructure, Seidenberg also cited network services as an important part of Bell Atlantic's strategy.
"Being an Internet company means more than just delivering pipes," Seidenberg said. "It means providing professional solutions that help customers manage their networks and ensure the security of their data."
Among the services Bell Atlantic will be offering are:
-- Virtual private network services, in conjunction with GTE;
-- Remote access services;
-- Web hosting, Internet access services;
-- Addressing business-to-business Internet capabilities with extranets, and network integration products.
Bell Atlantic Corp., in New York, at www.ba.com. |
