BellSouth's Perception Problem

BellSouth is a tricky company to categorize. On one hand, like other large carriers of its ilk, BellSouth is in the midst of technological investment in multiple sectors of its network, pursuing familiar and necessary industry technology and service strategies like fiber-to-the-home, voice over IP, wireline/wireless convergence and even video.

On the other hand, the carrier could easily be construed as somewhat of an anachronism: Of all the extant and acquired companies that once comprised the seven regional holding companies produced by the Bell System breakup, BellSouth is the only one that is still essentially regional, the only one that hasn't engaged in any mergers and acquisitions with one of its former Bell counterparts, and the only one that still uses the word “Bell” in its name.

BellSouth's leadership should be lauded, however, for not letting any of those facts stand in the way of its progression, regardless of whether or not one agrees that its independent direction is the right one.

And BellSouth is often surprisingly aggressive in certain technology areas. Its public embrace of the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture for convergence, for example, is somewhat unexpected for a carrier that doesn't own its wireless facilities outright but rather through a joint venture with SBC Communications. The carrier also has long been open to experimentation with fixed wireless technology, dating back to a mid-1990s strategy to offer video programming over an early broadband wireless format. Recently, BellSouth became one of the only carriers its size to engage in a trial of nascent WiMAX technology to extend broadband capabilities into areas without other high-speed network options.

Most of BellSouth's former Bell brethren have expanded either regionally or network-wise or both, acquiring each other, acquiring long-distance players and engaging in other M&A activity. But despite its regional limitations and its position as the only “unmerged” former RBOC, BellSouth still embraces the concepts of network convergence and service expansion as strongly as the next carrier. And the carrier appears to pride itself on its pragmatic approach to new technology implementation, new service introduction and the financial rewards of its approach.

“The winners will be those that can innovate in a way that's economically sound and sustainable,” said BellSouth Chairman and CEO F. Duane Ackerman in an interview with Telephony.