BellSouth Internet Services expands portal for high-speed users

Seeing a demand for content to sate high-speed subscribers, BellSouth Internet Services has expanded its Internet portal by adding content and partners aimed at appeasing broadband consumers. At the same time, the portal will continue to deliver content for narrowband customers.

“Broadband today is the narrowband of tomorrow,” said Stan Yeatts, vice president of portal and applications development for BellSouth Internet Services. “Content is going to change.”

The next step in the Internet’s evolution, he continued, is having applications that go beyond passive content. At the same time, he said, it’s important that the portal not ignore the established base of dial-up users.

“There’s going to be some content on the site that most dial-up folks will not be able to take advantage of,” Yeatts said. “We try to make sure that they still have plenty of options across the breadth of the category.”

BellSouth’s converged portal philosophy is based on customer conversations, noting, “There have been various groups who have tried to have dueling portals: a broadband portal and a narrowband portal. We have narrowband content, and we have streaming content.”

The portal now contains new content like short films and Internet Radio. Through a relationship with AtomFilms, BellSouth now presents an assortment of film genres that can be viewed at speeds up to 500 K/ps. At the same time, BellSouth provides search engines to dig more deeply into the resources of the entire Internet.

“The idea is to choose one or two premier partners and really blow that category out, then bookend to that a very powerful and easy-to-use search for all the other hundred thousand things that our categories don’t cover,” said Yeatts.

It is not the company’s intention to become just another Web portal, nor is it currently the intention to restrict the site to BellSouth customers, or, particularly, BellSouth DSL customers, he said.

“BellSouth is a lot more than just a pipes company. We are a services company,” Yeatts said. “A portal to us is a very strategic online touch point and launching pad for letting customers manager their services.”

As such, he promised, “We’ll be adding some very cool things on a monthly basis for the rest of the year.”