BellSouth joins Yahoo! party

Yahoo! has now won the trifecta of large communications companies, announcing today it is forming a strategic alliance with BellSouth, which joins SBC Communications and Verizon as partners to the Internet giant.

And like its former Bell brethren, BellSouth will offer a co-branded Internet access service with Yahoo!, which is bringing content and applications to the partnership. The service will be available in 2006 and will feature personalized home pages, Yahoo! e-mail and digital photo service, as well as other content and Internet radio.

“Yahoo! is focused on delivering the best possible products to our users, and we are excited to partner with BellSouth to bring unique content, powerful security features and award-winning communications tools to consumers throughout BellSouth's region,” said Dan Rosensweig, chief operating officer of Yahoo! Inc. “This new BellSouth relationship, in combination with our existing broadband alliances, gives Yahoo! the opportunity to distribute a high-quality broadband experience to consumers across the vast majority of the United States.”

Because of its strategic relationships with major telephone players, Yahoo! has not pursued a standalone voice-over-IP strategy, although it is looking at how adding voice can enable other applications to function more efficiently and create new applications, said Jeff Bonforte, product manager, voice, for Yahoo!