DENVER, Colorado -- Bell Atlantic Chairman CEO Ivan Seidenberg on Wednesday rated the Baby Bell's performance as only "average" so far for installing high-speed Internet connections, reflecting keen competition from cable television companies.
"We were off to an average start. We could do better," he told shareholders at the annual meeting. The CEO said the company has 80,000 DSL customers, up from 30,000 at the end of 1999. DSL, or digital subscriber lines, are installed to give customers high-speed Internet connections over telephone lines.
Bell Atlantic's previously announced agreement to merge with telephone giant GTE Corp. to create the largest local telephone company in the United States -- Verizon -- is expected to be completed next month, Seidenberg told shareholders.
Telephone companies are facing stiff competition from cable companies for the all-important high-speed connection into the home. Seidenberg said one-third of U.S. households are expected to want some type of high-speed access.
"Right now there are more cable modems out there than there are DSL customers. But on the average around the country, DSL has caught up big time this year. Our goal is not to be even, it's to go past them," Seidenberg told Reuters after the meeting.
He said that while a customer's need for DSL is lessened once any kind of high-speed connection is in the home, he expects customers ultimately to chose DSL because it is a simpler solution.
"In the short term ... cable modems will be fine for a certain portion of the market, but DSL, we think in the longer term is a better technology," he said.
Seidenberg gave higher marks to the company's long-distance telephone business in New York state, saying the company was "well on its way" to meeting this year's goal of one million customers. Some 428,000 customers had signed up by the end of the first quarter, or about 6 percent of households, which he characterized as a "spectacular start."
He said it will probably take about 18 to 24 months to be able to start offering long-distance service in the rest of the company's region.
Although negotiations for a new labor contract with members of the Communications Workers of America are not scheduled to begin until June 26, the talks were a key subject at the meeting.
About one-third of the people attending wore red CWA T-shirts, applauding each time one of their members asked a question. When the last contract expired in 1997, Bell Atlantic had a two-day strike. The current contract covering 71,000 workers in 13 states expires Aug. 8.
