EarthLink expands broadband footprint

EarthLink added another 4.5 million homes to its rapidly growing nationwide broadband footprint thanks to a deal with BellSouth giving the ISP access to DSL infrastructure in 79 cities in Bell South’s territory.

The deal expands on an earlier agreement with BellSouth that allowed EarthLink to lease lines in 27 southeastern markets. EarthLink said the agreement gives it the largest nationwide footprint of any ISP. Though no financial details of the deal were released, an EarthLink spokesman said the ISP would begin capitalizing on the contract immediately, launching DSL services in 14 of the new markets after May 1.

Over the last year EarthLink has aggressively pushed broadband launches across the U.S. with its cable and carrier partners, trying to migrate customers off of its dial-up services. So far it has agreements with all four Baby Bells, Comcast, AOL-Time Warner and Cox Communications, as well as several smaller CLECs, building up a broadband customer base of 780,000, or about 13% of its subscribers. The rapid build out, however, is not just a move toward higher revenue services. EarthLink is also using broadband to keep the customers it already has.

“A lot of our dial-up customers who want broadband aren’t able to get it through EarthLink,” a company spokesman said. “By expanding our broadband footprint, we’re able to keep those customers.” EarthLink estimated that 30% of the dial-up subscribers that leave the ISP do so because they want broadband in a market where EarthLink can’t provide them one.

While EarthLink has signed several partnership deals it has yet to form a co-branding deal like several other major Internet companies and carriers have done--the most notable being the deal between Yahoo and SBC. EarthLink officials said the company wants to remain the ISP for its customers and is sticking to it strategy of leasing DSL lines and cable lines from service providers.