SW Bell Starts Internet Service
Tad Cook
Southwestern Bell Kicks Off its Internet Access Service
By Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
Oct. 2--Southwestern Bell today kicks off its Internet access service
with aggressive pricing and eventual plans to make house calls to get
customers online.
The Dallas-Fort Worth area will be the first to get access to the Net
via Southwestern Bell Internet Services. Service in Houston could be
available as early as next month.
Southwestern Bell Internet Services, a new subsidiary of the parent
SBC Communications, also will be a content provider: Dallas-Fort Worth
customers who use access software provided by Bell will see news and
information provided by WFAA-TV, Reuters and other news services.
Spokesman Chris Talley said Bell will charge a flat fee of $19.95 a
month that can be added to existing customers' phone bill.
Customers can pay the equivalent of just under $17 per month if they
pay $199.50 for a year's service in advance. An additional discount is
available for those who pay with a Southwestern Bell-branded Visa
card, Talley said.
"This brings us one step closer to being a full communications
provider," he said. "We will be able to provide you with a variety of
services you can put all on one bill."
Bell will provide customers with a copy of the popular Netscape
Navigator software for browsing the Internet's World Wide Web, and
SurfWatch, which allows the blocking of undesirable Net sites.
Talley also said Bell plans to provide an additional service called Home
Assistance in which Southwestern Bell employees, for a fee, will come to
Internet customers' homes, set up the connection and provide a basic tutorial.
Details have yet to be worked out, he said.
Analysts say Southwestern Bell is the first phone company to include
house-call service as part of its Internet offering.
But as aggressive as Bell's Internet package is, a few items are
missing from the list of services offered by many of its local
competitors:
Bell initially won't let customers post their own home pages on the
World Wide Web, as do most local Internet service providers. Talley
said the company hopes to offer that by the end of the year.
Only computers using Microsoft's Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 operating
systems will be able to connect via Southwestern Bell Internet
Services. A Macintosh connection package is being developed and will
be available, again, by the year's end.
Although Bell has been vigorously marketing DigiLine -- a digital
phone line that allows speedy access to the Internet through a
technology called ISDN -- you won't be able to get there from
here. Southwestern Bell Internet Services will use 33,600-baud modems,
but no ISDN access -- at least until the end of the year.
Bell plans to have the service available in major cities in its
five-state area by the end of the year, but many rural areas served by
Southwestern Bell won't have local phone numbers to access the
Internet.
Bob Casali, president of the Dallas-based Southwestern Bell Internet
Services, said the system eventually will include a local Internet
dial-up number in the extended areas around cities, known as
LATAs. Some even more rural areas might get their own local dialup
numbers for the Internet service, Casali said.
Other big companies that have gotten into the Internet access
business, including AT&T, have stumbled on customer service
issues. AT&T had trouble meeting demand when customers flooded its
switchboard to sign up for service, and also had technical problems
that frustrated customers.
Casali said Bell's city-by-city rollout of the service should help
control demand, and additional technical support personnel will be
hired as the service is expanded across the region.
The phone company's entry into the increasingly competitive Internet
access business could mark a turning point for the hundreds of small
providers in Bell's five-state area that includes Texas, many of whom
charge significantly more than Bell.
Houston alone has more than 50 providers, most of them small startup
companies who already face competition from giants such as AT&T, MCI
and Sprint.
But so far, small providers have not seen much impact from these
500-pound gorillas.
Tom Jenkins, an analyst with TeleChoice, a New Jersey-based
telecommunications consulting firm, said big companies entering the
Internet access business don't seem to cause shakeouts among local
providers.
"They tend to attract a lot of users that would not have typically
considered Internet use," Jenkins said. "They lend a level of
credibility to the whole Internet services arena."
Local Internet service providers agreed.
"Specifically, we have seen little or no churn (customers leaving)
with AT&T and MCI getting into the market," said Billy Holbert, chief
operating officer at Charter Communications, which owns Phoenix
Data. "I don't expect we'll see it with Bell."
"I say all the other low-priced providers haven't seemed to hurt us at
all," said Ellyn Jones, president of NeoSoft, Houston's largest
Internet service provider. "Over time, Internet users become more
savvy, and about that time they need the kind of increased services we
can provide."
Southwestern Bell, considered by analysts to be among the most
marketing-savvy of all the "Baby Bell" phone companies, received some
advice in crafting its service from Pacific Telesis, the California
phone company, a Pacific Telesis spokesman said. The two
telecommunications giants are in the process of merging.
Pacific Telesis launched its own Internet service earlier this year.