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To: djane who wrote (53758)	9/6/1998 4:53:00 PM
From: djane	Respond to of 61433

Bell Atlantic's Vin Costello tells how the RBOC will provide data services infoworld.com September 7, 1998 By Michael Vizard InfoWorld Electric Following several recent and pending mergers, Bell Atlantic is now poised to become a major telecommunications force with an infrastructure that spans a large swath of the United States. As part of that expansion effort, the company formed the Bell Atlantic Networks Integration (BANI) subsidiary to lead its foray into data com-munications. Vin Costello, BANI president and CEO, talked with InfoWorld Executive News Editor Michael Vizard about how rising bandwidth requirements for data is forever changing the telecommunications industry. InfoWorld: What's the relationship between Bell Atlantic and BANI? Costello: We're an unregulated subsidiary dedicated to enterprise network integration. We handle all large accounts for Bell Atlantic, which is maybe your top 10,000 customers. We have about 1,000 people on payroll, and I'd say about 70 percent of them are engineers. InfoWorld: It seems that people are more willing now than they were a few years ago to turn to a network integrator. What's driving that? Costello: There's been change in the way people run their businesses. With business process re-engineering, people are driving the business differently today than they did in the past, and you've got increased complexity in terms of technology. Customers are always looking to be one up on their competition in terms of technology. So just when you're in the midst of thinking that you can finalize on a solution, a new technology comes out. It's very difficult to have personnel on your staff to keep up with that. It's also very difficult to have your staff trained in all these technologies. So you've got change, complexity, the time it takes to turn over and implement a large project, and then the resources. What my customers are telling me is it's tough to train people and then tough to keep them in jobs. InfoWorld: What do you make of the ADSL [Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line] vs. cable modem debate? Costello: ADSL is an interesting technology, but whether it'll be deployed in a ubiquitous manner remains to be seen. I think there's a lot going on in the high-speed bandwidth to the home, but the jury is still out as to who the sole winner's going to be. I think more and more we'll see one technology eclipse the next, so I think there will be a demand for both. I just don't know that there's going to be a single winner. InfoWorld: As a competitor of AT&T, what do you make of the proposed merger between AT&T and cable systems provider TCI? Costello: AT&T is picking up a company with $16 billion worth of debt. So they are spending $31 billion to buy TCI and picking up the $16 billion worth of debt -- so now you're up to $47 billion. And now you've got this old, antiquated cable company with single mode fiber and they're going to have to upgrade the network just to pass data two ways. I think they're going to have to spend a little bit more time figuring out what it's going to gain them. To survive, I think the carriers going forward need IP-based networks. InfoWorld: Why is that? Costello: I've been preaching around my company for the past several years that data is the future. The bottom line is that data is what it's all about, and all you'll see is voice passing over the data network. But you've got to build the highway for that. We've got a lot of one- and two-lane highways out there today, now we're going to build thousand-lane highways. They're going to be so big and take on such tremendous data streams that passing voice over it is going to be an incremental nothing. So the old paradigm of charging for usage on a phone call is going to change. You no longer are going to have usage; you're going to be offering services; and you're going to be offering connectivity. And all that other stuff is going to begin to disappear because the business is going to migrate over to the data side. The future says you can create an IP-based network that works at a lower cost and you can manage that network at a lower cost. It'll be faster, more robust. And you can even build it with ATM switches, and then over time replace boards in the ATM infrastructure with boards that'll allow your IP to work directly with your ATM infrastructure. InfoWorld: What does the future hold for ATM? Costello: I think we'd be hard pressed to find a dozen customers that are actually integrating all voice, video, and data onto their network. But I think ATM is the right infrastructure to build right now. ATM helps you achieve various quality-of-service levels that I think customers are going to be looking for when you provide new services. InfoWorld: Will BANI provide these services? Costello: With formation of the Data Solutions Group here at Bell Atlantic, we've created a new subsidiary to house the services piece. We're looking to build a network and partner with various carriers that will be providing solutions globally. We've put together a business plan that will basically allow us to achieve that goal, in terms of servicing our customers, over the next three to five years. Our customer base today for this is within the Bell Atlantic footprint. I think we've got about 35 percent of the Fortune 500 companies sitting right here, and I think 40 percent of international traffic originates here and 60 percent terminates in this footprint. So, basically, what this says is that we're a very attractive international partner. For an overview of recent InfoWorld Electric interviews, go to Interviews at a glance. Go to the Week's Top News Stories Please direct your comments to InfoWorld Deputy News Editor, Carolyn April Copyright c 1998 InfoWorld Media Group Inc. InfoWorld Electric is a member of IDG.net