Business News - BellSouth Gets Behind Wholesale Initiative

By Tara Seals

Posted: 04/2001

BellSouth Gets Behind Wholesale Initiative
By Tara Seals

BellSouth Corp. (www.bellsouth.com)
has stepped-up support for its wholesale division, BellSouth Interconnection
Services (www.interconnection.bellsouth.com),
with a three-pronged initiative for 2001.

The incumbent carrier will implement enhanced service levels, new products
and pricing plans throughout the year to benefit CLECS, ICPs, IXCs, resellers
and wireless providers. The company has earmarked $500 million for the
improvements.

"BellSouth is focusing capital and human resources on its wholesale
services market initiatives in 2001," says Bill Smith, CTO and president of
BellSouth Interconnection.

Service-level changes will shorten provisioning and maintenance time for
customers, the company says. It will provide standard service intervals, such as
a five- to eight-day period for installing DS-1s in its Southeast territory.

It also will pre-deploy facilities based on customer forecasts, and it will
beef up its service infrastructure with web-enablers and other tools to meet
increased customer demand and improve BellSouth’s reputation for turning up
services in a timely fashion.

"At BellSouth, we understand our wholesale customers’ requirements to
supply the high-speed products and services," says BellSouth
Interconnection’s vice president of marketing, John Irwin. "A key component
of the enhancements we are adding to our access services portfolio is the
pre-deployment of network infrastructure."

New products and services will be geared to provide end-to-end solutions to
customers. The carrier released OC-192 connectivity for point-to-point and ring
services earlier this year, and it plans to release 10mb and 100mb LAN
interconnection to the SONET product family.

New pricing plans will combine service-level agreements with volume and term
commitments. Additional components include customized reports, training and
network design.

"The initiative from BellSouth is an insightful combination of product,
pricing options and service, all designed to meet customer demands," says
Dave Patton, director of consulting at TeleChoice Inc. (www.telechoice.com).
"Access customers expect bandwidth to be available when they need it.
BellSouth’s collaborative customer work is anticipating this demand."