BellSouth Corp. last week announced plans to restructure the company to better position itself to provide bundled services.
The move comes just weeks after BellSouth failed in a bid to acquire Sprint Corp., which agreed instead to merge with MCI WorldCom Inc.
Jeff Battcher, a spokesman for BellSouth, said the restructuring has been in the works for several months. The goal of the plan is to “flatten” the organization of the company and give customers one point of contact for purchasing a variety of BellSouth services, said Battcher.
The plan calls for the company to be organized into five separate groups.
The new Customer Markets group will be responsible for all sales, marketing and customer care activities across domestic retail and carrier customer markets for voice, data, Internet and video services.
The company’s wireless business will remain its own group, and customers will be able to sign up for wireless service either as part of a bundle through the Customer Markets group, or independently of other services through the Wireless Services group, said Battcher.
Mark Feidler was named president of the Wireless Services group, which will be responsible for all domestic wireless customer operations, including wireless data and cellular properties outside of BellSouth’s traditional operating region.
The Network Service group will handle development and operation of BellSouth’s networks, advanced data technologies, Internet-based services and the company’s field operations.
International operations, including wireless businesses outside the United States, will be included in BellSouth International.
The Advertising and Publishing group will be responsible for the company’s domestic and international electronic and printed directory advertising.
All the groups will remain under a corporate umbrella and report directly to Duane Ackerman, chairman and chief executive officer of the company.
The new structure will be effective January 1.
In separate news, BellSouth reported its worldwide wireless subscriber base surpassed 10 million customers to end the third quarter at 10.3 million subscribers. The company’s international wireless subscribers slightly exceed its domestic wireless subscribers with 5.2 million and 5.1 million customers respectively.
Of BellSouth’s total third-quarter revenues of $6.4 billion, domestic wireless accounted for $815 million and the company’s international operations generated revenues of $575 million. That compares with overall revenues of $5.9 billion during the same quarter last year, of which domestic wireless accounted for $702 million and international operations accounted for $514 million.
