re: BellSouth to the Rescue?Let me see if I've got this straight. We've got a company sagging under a massive load of debt that is suffering contraction in its core businesses. Barring government subsidy, how is this segment supposed to transition to profitability?
While there is a great deal of hope that new data services are the salvation, nobody seems to be rolling up huge bank offering them. Broadband initiative? Puh-lease! The road to bankruptcy is littered with the corpses of data-focused service providers.
Everyone just takes as gospel the fact that new investment in infrastructure is necessary, but how the heck are they going to finance this? If BS actually purchases all the gear you have listed in this article, the pile of bonds necessary to finance the projects would reach the moon. I smell government intervention in the not to distant future...
I will trade you a handful of magic beans for a new optical infrastructure...
re: BellSouth to the Rescue?This RFP has been floating around for the past year. Software vendors, SI's, and hardware are all involved. Those that I know of include csco, rstn, kpmg, jnpr, gtp, Dorado, and Orchestream. The whole exercise turned out to be somewhat of a soap opera.
Neither of the software vendors mentioned are going to be selected based on my understanding.
Let's see - I think I have that RFP floating around here somewhere. ;)
re: BellSouth to the Rescue?BellSouth os the only RBOC that has announced its intentions to deploy MPLS. There are a lot of questions about the performace of MPLS. Its scalbility is questionable.
BellSouth should co-ordinate the trial activities with other RBOCs. Since most of the RBOCs deploy the same technology, it behooves that edge and core routers, DWDM, and all optical gears must be tested in a co-ordinated fashion.
It is too dangerous to buy edge and core routers, DWDM, and optical networkgear should be bought from established companies. Lucent and Nortel are in a unique position to meet the needs of BellSouth. But if the company strays and buys any thing from start-ups or recent start-ups that have gone public in the last two or three years.
re: BellSouth to the Rescue?Seriously LR - what prompted this article? MPLS edge and core, DWDM and new SONET gear all at the same time??? Come on now...
The MPLS and MSPP RFP's are at least a year and a half old... I will admit your close on the MPLS RFP but the remainder of your article is pure fiction and / or fantasy.
I'm just curious what LR's motivation was to write this given the only BLS references were from two marketing folk's soundbytes saying "data is good... data is our friend..."
More erosion of the competition along with the lack of tele-equipment at the E-bay yard sales, will bring the monopoly back...Get your AT&T stocks now!
re: BellSouth to the Rescue?You make an excellent point about the Bells needing to co-ordinate trial activity and technology adoption. It will never happen but it would save them a tremendous amount of money and make their networks much less vulnerable to competition.
If the Cable companies have any kind of advantage it is that they are much more of a collective than the Bells. Softswitch vendors point to CableLabs and the Packetcable specification as evidence that the cable companies will deliver voice services before the Bells figure out how to deliver video.
I guess you could argue that Telcordia is that centralized facility in the RBOC world but it just doesn't seem to carry the same weight.
I'm probably being naive, but I think that the Bells could benefit from more collaboration too. I guess the problem is that in the end they see each other as the ultimate competition.
What prompted the writing of this story, you asked? I suppose it was the fact that BellSouth claims that it is going to do everything, and maybe more, than was reported in the story. Is that the RBOC's actual intention? Will it follow through on those plans? I don't think the story claimed to know the answer to either of those questions.
There are a lot, I mean a lot, of analysts and insiders that do think this is a bunch of sound and fury and nothing else. Though I didn't have room to included it, one analyst told me that BellSouth has made similar noise about ethernet. When all was said in done, however, the RBOC built out Atlanta and Miami, according to the analyst, and little else. He suspects this announcement will end in a similar way.
Just about everyone agrees that the only way the Bells will move is if they are pushed. Whether they are being pushed or not is of some debate. Some say the RBOCs are sitting pretty in the wake of the mass failure of CLECs, DLECs and ELECs. Others say that the Bells are shaking in their boots over potential threats from cable companies and wireless players.
If nothing else, the Bells do recognize that data services represent the best way to grow their revenues. Will that awareness translate into significant and immediate action, only time will tell.
Joe, good to see you in print even as a special submission.