IT'S GO TIME

With little flash and not much industry attention, BellSouth has bloomed into a beauty. Its $72 billion market cap eclipses AT&T's, Sprint's and WorldCom's. Duane Ackerman and his crew have done yeoman's work extending the availability of DSL service into their kudzu-covered territory. They've made progress in the Americas selling wireless phones used as a home's primary link to the wireline network. 

Now BellSouth is launching some meaty services—namely gigabit Ethernet and storage-enabled networks—that could bring an incremental boost to the slowing stream of data revenues. Nice, but not enough. BellSouth is like the promising boxer that dances around in the opening rounds, refusing to throw any punches in the direction of the champion. It's time for the carrier to show some guts, which means it's time to broker an M&A deal that puts it on the map outside its cozy nine-state home. 

Who to buy? The interexchange carriers are ripe for the picking, as are independent long-hauls such as Global Crossing and Level 3. Any of these acquisition targets would bring BellSouth closer to what it needs to be: a carrier with heft that won't be flattened once SBC and Verizon win 271 approvals in all their territories. Both the FCC and the industry would welcome the move. BellSouth could easily find a way around 271 compliance (read the Genuity handbook) and squeeze by any antitrust issues that arise. 

The only question is whether BellSouth has the stomach to make such a bold move. For its sake and the sake of the industry, let's hope so.