BellSouth, 3Com Seal DSL Alliance

BellSouth and 3Com Corp. Wednesday announced a partnership
to speed the deployment of Digital Subscriber Line service to BellSouth
customers in 30 Southeastern markets.

The two companies will jointly roll out BellSouth.net FastAccess ADSL
Internet service using 3Com modems later this year to consumers and
businesses. More than 5 million customer phone lines will be ADSL capable
upon rollout. The first customers will come online during the spring.

Once the G.lite standard is ratified, the companies will also
offer splitterless ADSL service. G.lite is a standard that will govern
lower-speed versions of DSL and is designed to make DSL both cheaper and
easier to install. The standard is currently under review by the
International Telecommunications Union.

John Robinson, BellSouth’s vice president of strategic management, said the
partnership is designed to make it easier for its customers to get
reliable, high-speed access.

“This alliance with 3Com provides a bundled product that gets the customer
up and running with one stop,” he said.

BellSouth expects its data business to amount to more than $5 billion in
annual revenue by 2002.