BellSouth is turning to 3Com to help boost its high-speed Internet services.
The US regional phone company said Wednesday that it will offer 3Com (COMS) modems and BellSouth (BLS) digital subscriber-line services through joint retail and online locations as well as BellSouth sales offices, hoping to ease the adoption of digital subscriber lines, or DSL.
"This alliance with 3Com provides a bundled product that gets the customer up and running with one stop," BellSouth vice president John Robinson said in a statement.
BellSouth said the service will be available to more than 5 million customers in 30 southeastern markets during the first half of 1999.
The BellSouth.net FastAccess service will compete with high-speed services offered over cable lines by AtHome and AT&T, following its acquisition of Tele-Communications, Inc.
BellSouth and 3Com said they will incorporate the G.lite DSL standard when it is ratified later this year.
The alliance is part of BellSouth's data strategy -- the company expects to generate more than US$5 billion in data services revenue annually by 2002.
Reuters contributed to this report.
