BellSouth eyes enterprises with metro data strategy

With today’s launch of service in Florida and Tennessee, BellSouth now is providing long-distance throughout its region and is in position to build on the 25% penetration rate it has achieved in the small-to-medium-business sector since launching interLATA service in Georgia and Louisiana last May. By comparison, the RBOC has a 12% market share in the residential long distance market.

It will do so by focusing its efforts on moving data traffic across the metro, said Rex Adams, president of BellSouth Long Distance Services.

The enterprise market long has been coveted by the RBOCs, which have been hampered in their efforts to attack the sector due to an inability to provide long-distance services. BellSouth became the first RBOC to complete its footprint on Dec. 20 when the FCC approved its application to provide long-distance service in Florida and Tennessee.

“Most businesses tend to blanket a metro area and rarely do they have just one location in a city,” Adams said. “So there is much more of a need for a lot of metropolitan locations backhauled to a single data center.”

According to Adams, BellSouth will focus on providing backhaul services to multi-location businesses – such as banks, health care providers and retailers – by linking those locations via its local data network and then interfacing with its now contiguous long-distance network, which will be used to connect to a rural data center, perhaps located in another state.

While interexchange carriers are capable of providing similar services, Adams said BellSouth is better positioned to do so.

“Most of the IXCs have expanded to London, Frankfurt and Tokyo, and we’ve expanded to cover metropolitan areas in the Southeast,” Adams said. “So if you’re the type of corporation that has offices in the five largest cities in the world, BellSouth might not be your first choice. But most companies have multiple locations in a region and need backhaul to a single location.”

Adams added that BellSouth is able to offer the stability and service that small-to-medium enterprises crave.

“What we’re hearing from customers is that a lot of the traditional long-distance carriers have cut back, and if you look at where the downsizing has occurred, typically it is on the service side,” Adams said. “So we have really focused on the service aspect for the enterprise space.”

BellSouth’s Customer Resource Center handles provisioning, service assurance, trouble reporting, and provides customers with a dedicated account manager with a direct-dial number, something that Adams said is “pretty uncommon” and a key sales tool.

“Customers are looking for service differentiation,” Adams said. “Because they are getting lousy services, they typically have to add head count in their businesses to mitigate and manage the challenges.”

Adams added that securing long distance approval for Florida would provide BellSouth with a tremendous international opportunity. “It fits nicely with our South American properties,” he said.

BellSouth launched 10 long-distance calling plans in Tennessee and Florida, led by the Business Preferred Rate, which automatically adjusts a business customer’s pre-minute rate each month based on usage. The per-minute rate ranges from 6.5 cents to 6.9 cents.