NEW YORK-“We’ve done the really easy stuff, and now the fun begins,” Ivan Seidenberg, chairman and chief executive officer of Bell Atlantic Corp., said in a keynote address Oct. 7 at Fall Internet World ’99.
The Internet has evolved rapidly from its genesis as a provider of static information to today’s offerings of transactional capabilities.
“Today, 30 percent of Americans have a mobile phone. What will it mean when more than 70 percent have one within the next few years?” he said.
“Today, 65 percent of American teenagers are online, and they expect everything online … Only 3 percent of the world population has logged onto the Internet today. What will it mean when that number grows to 25 percent within a few years?”
Electronic commerce by consumers has grabbed everyone’s attention, and it is a significant and growing piece of the transactional aspects of the Internet.
However, within several years the consumer piece of this growing pie will be just one-third the size of business-to-business e-commerce, which Forrester Research projects will have become a $1.3 trillion worldwide sector by 2003.
“The Internet will morph into a complete rethinking of corporate structures as companies integrate supply chains, flatten hierarchies and transfer knowledge throughout their organizations,” Seidenberg said.
Bell Atlantic so far has been too busy managing consolidation to pay sufficient attention to getting its own house in order as a “.com” enterprise, Seidenberg acknowledged. It has merged with GTE Corp. and has agreed to combine its wireless assets with those of Vodafone AirTouch plc into a spinoff company.
“E-business changes all the support structures that deal with the retail world. You should be able to dial into Bell Atlantic and do all your transactions over our Web site,” he said.
“Our industry is transforming and consolidating itself, so it’s hard to stop for a year right now in order to transform our infrastructure.”
As awesome as the static and transactional potentialities of the Internet are, they still represent cyberspace counterparts of actions, like research and sales, that also are undertaken in the three-dimensional physical world, the chief executive said.
“Things are coming that can only be done on the Internet, like video conferencing and real-time, anywhere, anytime communications among people and nations,” he said.
“And third-generation wireless technology will put multimedia into the palm of your hand … We have built our [Code Division Multiple Access] network to migrate to 3G.”
Wireless Internet data communications, less than a $2 billion market today, is expected to grow to more than $13 billion by 2003, according to the Yankee Group projections Seidenberg cited.
“When we combine with GTE, we will have more coast-to-coast coverage and more capacity than any other carrier,” Seidenberg said. “Yesterday, we announced that we are the first carrier to deploy a new data compression software that will double the speed of wireless data.”
Starting Nov. 1, customers of Bell Atlantic Mobile’s AirBridge packet data Internet access service will be able to buy from Fourelle Systems Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., its Venturi Personal Client software for a one-time, all-inclusive fee of $40. BAM customers also can trial the software free for 30 days by downloading it from Fourelle’s Web site.
Fourelle’s Venturi is an Internet bandwidth optimization software that improves the performance and reduces the cost of running Internet Protocol-based applications on wide area network links.
Typical wireless modems offer throughput speeds of 9600 bits per second to 19.2 kilobits per second. Fourelle and Bell Atlantic said third-party tests of Venturi have demonstrated modem performance increases to as much as 28.8 kbps.
“We have seen on average a 125-percent performance improvement on Web browsing over wireless and a 50 (percent) to 300 percent performance gain in sending and receiving e-mail wirelessly, including attachments,” said Patrick Glenn, Fourelle chairman and CEO.
Beyond providing pipes for communications access, Bell Atlantic sees its telecommunications business as helping customers manage, install and secure Internet-related functionality within their enterprises, Seidenberg said.
“With GTE, we will provide bulletproof Virtual Private Networks for remote access services to allow companies to support the growing numbers of mobile workers and telecommuters,” he said.
