WebProNews » BellSouth

Nearly 20% Of Marketing Emails Fail To Arrive

Mike Sachoff — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:15:51 +0000

Nearly twenty percent (19.9%) of commercial, permissioned emails never reached consumers inboxes in the United States and Canada in the second half of 2009, according to a new report from Return Path.

Permissioned email reached only 80.1 percent of consumer inboxes in the United States and Canada during the second half of 2009, a .8 percent increase from the 79.3 percent inbox place in the first half of 2009. In the United States and Canada, 3.5 percent of those emails ended up in a junk or bulk emails folder and 16.3 percent were missing with no notification of non-delivery.

In Europe, 85.5 percent of emails reached consumers inboxes, 3.6 percent of emails were delivered to a junk or bulk folder, and 11 percent were missing. In the Asia Pacific region, inbox placement of emails was higher in the second half of 2009 with an 86.9 percent success rate.

"We spent a lot of time in 2009 discussing how inbox placement rates affect ROI, and we’re going to continue talking about this issue in 2010. Many senders believe that their email campaigns are achieving a 95% to 98% delivery rate. However, as our latest Email Deliverability Benchmark Report clearly illustrates, senders still do not have the correct data to accurately determine true ROI," said George Bilbrey, President and Co-founder, Return Path.

"If senders and ESPs count only their hard bounces as emails that failed to reach consumers, they’re not getting an accurate metric as to how many emails actually made it into subscriber inboxes. Ultimately, only emails that reach a subscriber’s inbox can be opened, clicked and converted into a loyal and active customer. Remember, sent minus bounce does not equal delivered."

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in the United States ranked in order of difficulty were BellSouth, Gmail, MSN, Hotmail, and Yahoo!.

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in Canada were Primus.ca, Shaw, SaskTel, MTS, and Bell. Primus.ca which uses Postini as part of its email filtering system, failed to deliver 55% of emails that marketers sent to Primus.ca users which represents a 2% increase from the first half of 2009.

The top five ISPs for senders to reach consumer inboxes in the United Kingdom ranked in order of difficulty are Demon, BT Internet, AOL, Orange, and Yahoo!.

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BellSouth Rescinds DSL Fee

WebProNews Staff — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:51:53 +0000

BellSouth had planned to continue collecting a $2.97 per month fee from its 3.2 million DSL customers, even though that fee had been originally collected for the federal government’s Universal Service Fund.

When the Federal Communications Commission changed in August 2005 how it would treat DSL service, it eliminated the requirement for providers like BellSouth and Verizon to collect that fee.

But instead of simply removing the fee from customers’ bills, both telecoms chose to continue collecting it themselves. BellSouth planned to keep charging the same $2.97 monthly fee to customers, while Verizon dropped a few pennies from what the USF fee had been in planning to keep it on customer bills.

An AP report has now noted that BellSouth decided to eliminate plans to persist in collecting that fee. Pressure from the FCC may have helped, as the agency inquired of both BellSouth and Verizon why their continued collection was not a violation of truth-in-billing laws.

BellSouth issued a statement where they chose to forgo the new charge:

Today, BellSouth announced that it is immediately eliminating a fee assessed on its DSL Internet services. As described on BellSouth’s website, the broadband fee was designed to recover a number of costs remaining from previous regulatory obligations and other network expenses that increase the cost of the Internet services we provide to consumers.

Verizon has resisted following BellSouth on this reversal, according to the report:

Verizon said the new fee is needed to recover costs related to offering the high-speed Internet service.

“We would have no comment on it other than to say obviously we will explain to them (the FCC) whatever it is they want to have explained,” said Verizon spokesman Brian Blevins.

Since the FCC has confirmed to AP that it sent Verizon a letter of inquiry, it looks like they will have to explain it in Washington:

FCC spokeswoman Tamara Lipper said Friday that the agency prefers to let competitive forces govern the markets with minimum government regulation but is “willing and quick to act to protect consumers.”

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

BellSouth Also Grifting DSL Fees

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:47:36 +0000

Just as Verizon has replaced the Universal Service Fund fee customers paid each month with a new fee that goes straight into their bank account, BellSouth will likewise keep the charge in place and pocket the cash.

(Warning: strident opinions ahead. Thinking may be encouraged.)

Come on, Ivan Seidenberg and Duane Ackerman. Just please, stop it. Tell your PR departments to stop trying to spin your collecting of new fees as the USF comes to an end as some sort of “regulatory cost recovery.”

The regulation has ended. People are not buying the story that your companies still need to recover costs for something that no longer exists. People are not stupid enough (I hope) to look at a new fee starting as one ends, with that new fee dropping directly into your coffers instead of Uncle Sam’s, and think of it as anything other than a straightforward grift.

News of Verizon’s fee exchange circulated yesterday. Instead of letting customers off the hook for the extra buck or two they had been paying for DSL service, Verizon will impose a new fee that almost matches the USF charge.

CNet brings us today’s tale that BellSouth has bettered Verizon’s decision. Instead of knocking off a few cents from the old fee to the new fee as Verizon did, BellSouth kept the full $2.97 per month fee intact.

The email BellSouth sent to CNet is, as MasterCard would call it, priceless:

BellSouth had a different explanation for keeping its $2.97 fee. It explained in a statement sent to CNET News.com via e-mail that the charge is “to offset costs incurred in complying with regulatory obligations and other expenses. The fee also recovers costs associated with additional systems necessitated by federal regulation, as well as costs associated with monitoring, participating in and complying with regulatory proceedings, and other network and servicing requirements.”

Let us reasonably concur that Verizon and BellSouth did indeed incur an expense associated with collecting, processing, and forwarding the USF fees to the bottomless spending pit we like to call “our Representatives in Congress.”

That expense, as it has existed, is now over. The companies should realize some small cost savings as they no longer have to dedicate time, people, and resources to USF collection. It is probably a nominal savings, considering Verizon and BellSouth have market caps of $99 billion and $72 billion, respectively.

Instead of taking the cost savings, and maybe some intangible goodwill by passing along the savings to consumes with USF’s demise, they pass along new replacement fees instead. Here’s Verizon’s perspective on those fees, again from CNet:

“We didn’t think the standalone DSL service would be competitively priced if we put all of the cost on the service,” said Bobbi Henson, a Verizon spokeswoman. “So we spread the cost across the entire base of our DSL customers. Doing this as another fee was coming off the bill seemed like good timing, since it will have little impact on what customers are actually paying per month.”

Good timing, yes. For whom, though? Customers?

Again, as was pointed out yesterday, other providers have delivered standalone DSL to their customers for some time. Verizon and BellSouth seem to contend that deploying naked DSL was as monumental an undertaking as getting Apollo 13 home multiple times.

The real shame is in a month or two, this will be forgotten. They know this. No one is going to stay fired up for a dollar or two each month. It shouldn’t be that way. Dollars add up over time. Verizon and BellSouth both know this. People should take that to heart as well.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

EarthLink Saves Big Easy From BellSouth

WebProNews Staff — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 22:23:32 +0000

EarthLink will continue to provide free wireless access in New Orleans by assuming management of the city’s WiFi network and investing some $15 million over three years to improve and build out that network.

It looks like Greg Meffert won’t face jail time after all. The CIO for the city of New Orleans made no mistake in stating how strongly he felt about maintaining availability of the wireless network for citizens, despite rumblings from BellSouth.

WiFiNetNews blogger Glenn Fleishman referenced BellSouth’s recent history of publicly-nice, privately-hostile behavior in his latest blog post. The telecom company, soon to merge with AT&T in a $67 billion deal, wants Meffert to turn off the free wireless Internet access now that the danger of Katrina has passed.

At the core of the issue rests legislation passed by New Orleans legislature, which limits municipalities from offering broadband networks with speeds faster than 144kbps. The network currently active in New Orleans operates at 512kbps, and EarthLink will maintain that when they take over private management of that Internet access.

USA Today reported on the offer, which comes on the heels of BellSouth’s requests that Meffert shut down the network:

More than 10,000 people are using the service. Among them: police officers, law firms, restaurants, bars and coffee shops. EarthLink will keep providing the service for free, but plans to sell faster premium services in time.

Jeff Battcher, a BellSouth spokesman, says that his company has spent “tens of millions of dollars” repairing the local network, “which any Wi-Fi network would rely on.”

Fleishman answered Battcher’s comment at length in his post:

BellSouth said that the Wi-Fi networks relies on access that BellSouth spent tens of millions of dollar repairing. Which, in fact, they were obliged to repair under state and federal regulations for incumbent operators that grant a monopoly in exchange for certain kinds of services being universally available or available on a certain basis, so let’s not pretend that this gives them special rights.

The incumbents have fought hard for unregulated broadband, and have won practically every decision they’ve needed. It’s thus doubly irritating to hear them complain that they’re spending money to build services other people use, such as T-1s. If the service is regulated, they are subject to strict tariffs and conditions. If the service is unregulated, they’re competing in the market. In either case, they have to spend that rebuilding money if they want to maintain their rights.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Big Easy Broadband Battles BellSouth

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 22:11:13 +0000

Hurricane Katrina prompted New Orleans’ chief information officer to open the municipal 512kbps mesh network to anyone who wanted to access it, but now faces the prospect of a shutdown and legal fight prompted by BellSouth.

“If I have to go to jail, I guess I will,” New Orleans’ CIO Greg Meffert said in a Red Herring report. “If they really want to play that game, I guess they are right. But we simply cannot turn off these few lifelines we have to our city and businesses.”

The game is Legal Chicken, and it illustrates the fallout from local and state legislatures passing telecom-friendly laws that ban municipalities from competing with telcos on providing Internet access. Despite continued telephone and Internet outages in the city, the telcos want this network shut down. Now.

“The vendors, the BellSouths of this world, are not only going to force us back, making our existing Wi-Fi illegal, but also they want to close a loophole for emergencies so that we would not do this again,” said Meffert in the article.

Blogger Craig Settles thinks city governments have to be aware of telcos meddling in the legislatures:

Cities do well to maintain their vigilance on legislation in Congress and statehouses which impacts municipal broadband so they don’t get blindsided. Remember House Bill 30 in Pennsylvania which restricts these projects? This was a bill that had been lying around dormant for over a year before Verizon decided to revive it in response to Philadelphia Wireless.

Settles’ observation refers to the bill that nearly derailed Phildelphia’s plans for a city-wide wireless network. Eventually the bill was reworked to include an exemption for Philadelphia.

New Orleans and Philadelphia’s governments did not keep their eyes on the telcos’ operations in the state capitals. Other municipalities should learn a lesson from their examples.

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Net Neutrality Foes To Merge

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 17:33:55 +0000

Outspoken advocates of a two-tiered Internet will soon share a single corporate structure as AT&T will shell out $67 billion to acquire BellSouth.

AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre and BellSouth CTO William Smith have publicly demanded from their separate corporate fiefdoms that major Internet players like Google and Microsoft need to pay more for their heavier usage of the networks that get their content to Internet users. Now the two men can spend plenty of time together crafting statements calling for that two-tiered Internet.

The Wall Street Journal reported the deal that will bring BellSouth back into the AT&T fold. The move looks like a reassembly of the old AT&T, which was broken up 22 years ago in order to create competition in the telecom marketplace.

Approval of the deal still requires regulatory approval from the FCC. That prospect doesn’t trouble Whitacre, the WSJ noted:

“There will be some who say we’re putting the Bell system back together,” he said in an interview. “But this is a different world.” The AT&T-BellSouth deal and Verizon’s acquisition of MCI were approved with a few minor conditions attached, despite concerns they would lead to higher prices for business customers.

Also, the Journal cited a Bell-friendly environment within the Bush Administration and the FCC that should lead to a quick rubber-stamping of the merger. Competition with cable and VoIP companies, both providing phone services, look like the points that will enable the FCC to endorse the deal.

The aftermath of the deal leaves AT&T and Verizon as the two top telecoms in the United States. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg is also an advocate of the two-tiered Internet model.

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Blogger Calls For Pre-emptive Strike On BS

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 21:27:48 +0000

BS is an abbreviation for BellSouth, whose chief technical officer Bill Smith told the media his firm has taken the call for multi-tiered Internet connectivity to the big Internet players; Jeff Pulver suggests the online powers-that-be hit BellSouth first, but it won’t happen for one simple reason: money.

“Turn off BellSouth!” Pulver posted in his recent blog entry. He recommends that, instead of sitting back and paying off service providers like BellSouth and SBC who demand more cash to ensure better connections, Google and others need to show them the door, a solidly closed door, that is.

Pulver’s suggestion called for Google to cut off BellSouth first:

Given the market power that Google has today, they are more relevant to the Internet community than BellSouth….I would choose to implement a BellSouth Boycott and stop offering access to Google to BellSouth customers and would start advertising Cox Cable service on any requests that came from BellSouth customers in their regions. I’m willing to wager that by Q3 2006, BellSouth’s DSL group will feel the effects of their grave error in judgment.

In his post, Pulver noted how help from Washington DC lawmakers will be slow in arriving: “(W)e don’t have the time to wait for this to get on the national agenda of Congress and then weigh in with their approach.”

A Google boycott wouldn’t just get a rise out of BellSouth customers. If it were implemented to deny delivery of advertisements in AdSense blocks displayed by site publishers when requested by a BellSouth DSL user, there would be a huge outcry. Small advertisers would complain, but the real big companies could make even more effective complaints, like placing full-page ads in papers like USA Today or the Wall Street Journal.

That scenario, enjoyable though it may be to consider, isn’t going to happen. AdWords is the double-edged sword that would cut Google even as Google cut off BellSouth. Google is first and foremost an advertising company. It makes far more money from search ads than it does from AdSense placements on sites that use it.

For Google to show BellSouth the door, they have to accept the loss of search ad revenue while they wait for either the customers to switch providers or BellSouth to back down. That’s a bet Google won’t be willing to make, no matter how much IPO cash they still have on their side of the table.

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Google To BellSouth: Nuts!

WebProNews Staff — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 14:01:50 +0000

The search advertising company is not talking to telecom companies about paying them extra for bandwidth, and has no intention of paying for tiering their traffic.

“On December 22, 1944, German officers under the flag of truce delivered a message from General der Panzertruppe von Luttwitz Commander of XLVII Panzerhops, demanding the surrender of Bastogne. After receiving the message Brigadier General Mcauliffe exclaimed “Aw, nuts” which was his official reply to the request for surrender. This message was delivered by Joseph Harper to the Germans. He told the Germans it meant they could all go to Hell.”
-- the US 101st Airborne holding Bastogne declined to accept the Germans' offer.

In no uncertain terms, Google spokesperson Barry Schnitt told Networking Pipeline that Google isn’t giving a vig to BellSouth or Verizon for prioritizing traffic:

“Google is not discussing sharing of the costs of broadband networks with any carrier. We believe consumers are already paying to support broadband access to the Internet through subscription fees and, as a result, consumers should have the freedom to use this connection without limitations.”

That’s exactly the point others have made, particularly Om Malik on his blog:

The argument is that the phone companies are going to charge for better performance for say games, or movie downloads or software downloads. It is not a bad thought, though only in cases where latency is a big issue. The argument of better network performance, as many in the business would tell you, is a bit of chimera.

Even if you buy into the argument, as a consumer, what I would like to see is that if incumbents charge for the network access, then they pass on those savings to consumers. After all we are paying for the network – about $40 a month.

It sounds like Google CEO Eric Schmidt has called the ~~Germans~~ telecom companies’ bluff. I have to admit I didn’t think Google would cut off BellSouth, but it looks like the tough guys in the Googleplex are ready to go to the mattresses rather than let Bill Smith or Ed Whitacre or Ivan Seidenberg push them around. Good for Google.

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BellSouth To Nickel-And-Dime iTunes

WebProNews Staff — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 15:07:37 +0000

The telecom company has begun conversations with several unnamed Internet content providers on charging for delivering their content “reliably and speedily.”

"In most states of the United States, extortion is more widely defined to include the obtaining of money or property of another by inducing his consent through wrongful use of fear, force, or authority of office; blackmail, ransom, and threat of force are included under this definition." -- "extortion." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press, 2003. Answers.com 17 Jan. 2006.

BellSouth has pressed forward with its demands for more money from content providers. Company CTO Bill Smith suggested Apple “might be asked to pay a nickel or a dime to insure the complete and rapid transmission of a song via the Internet,” according to MarketWatch. In another example, Yahoo and its streamed video content could face similar levies.

BellSouth has support from one content provider of note: Mark Cuban, who owns HD Net, a provider of high-definition movies and other media.

“This isn’t just about video. It’s about other concepts and applications that can’t be offered net users without (Quality Of Service),” he wrote in an email. “I think the end user benefits the most. They can opt for using services where the quality of service is higher.”

Business 2.0 writer Om Malik questioned in his blog whether the telcos can maintain that quality of service:

While we are on the topic of the much ballyhooed QoS, can the incumbents who propose to charge for better and faster delivery of content deliver an optimum and consistent 3 Mbps every minute of the day to the consumer who coughs up hard earned $40 a month? After all that consumer, not Yahoo or Apple is their first and primary customer.

It’s an excellent question, and one the telcos have yet to answer.

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BellSouth Punishes New Orleans Over Free WiFi

WebProNews Staff — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 15:14:54 +0000

When officials for the hurricane ravaged city announced a plan to deploy wireless Internet across New Orleans, BellSouth rescinded a donation offer to the city in response.

Sony should be grateful that BellSouth has been eagerly vying for the post of “latest company to arouse the public’s ire.” After having made remarks about charging web sites for prioritizing their Internet traffic, BellSouth has managed to give its public relations staff more cause to reach for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

The Washington Post reported on a lively exchange between BellSouth and New Orleans officials. It seems that BellSouth was none too pleased over the prospect of the city becoming a municipal provider of wireless Internet service:

(R)egional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city.

Broadband Internet access and the prospect of municipal governments taking the initiative to make it available at a minimal cost to citizens has become a zero-sum game to telecoms like BellSouth.

Efforts by telecoms and cable companies to derail that initiative have reached all the way to Capitol Hill, where former SBC executive turned House Representative Pete Sessions has attempted to push through the “Preserving Innovation in Telecom Act” and ban any municipality from offering “telecommunications, information, or cable services” except where private enterprises had not provided such services.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.