Release Date: Thursday, March 20, 2003

TIME FOR FEDERAL REGULATORS TO 'TAKE THE THUMB OFF' TELECOMMUNICATIONS, SAYS BELLSOUTH CEO DUANE ACKERMAN

ATLANTA, Ga. — With the nation's economy growing at an almost imperceptible rate, it's time for the federal government to remove regulations on the bigger telecommunications companies imposed during the economic boom years of the 1990s, said Duane Ackerman, chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp.

"As we look at the '90s, regulation was that additional thumb on the incumbent operators in order to accelerate competition," said Ackerman. "The interesting point is that even though the bubble has burst and the economy is now back to growing in the single digits, the thumb is still on the industry, and that certainly has got to be changed."

BellSouth still has plenty of competition, despite a flat economy and some well-publicized bankruptcies involving telecommunications companies, Ackerman said. In fact, BellSouth competes with about 350 local exchange carriers in the nine southeastern states that comprise its domestic telephone territory. Those local companies can compete because federal law dictates the wholesale prices carriers like BellSouth can charge competitors to carry their traffic.

"That's just part of the environment that we find ourselves in and that we have to manage through," said Ackerman.

Ackerman made the remarks during a speech he gave March 20 to a group of Terry College of Business alumni and guests at the University of Georgia's Atlanta Alumni Center.

With a career in communications that extends back to 1964, Ackerman was named president and CEO of BellSouth's local telephone service unit in 1992. In 1995, he took over as vice-chairman and CEO of parent company, BellSouth Corp. In 1997, Ackerman was appointed as BellSouth's president and CEO. In 1998, he became BellSouth's chairman and CEO.

Ackerman also serves as vice chairman of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC), which is composed of up to 30 chief executives representing the nation's major communications and network service providers and information technology, finance and aerospace companies. Created by a 1982 executive order, NSTAC members advise the president on communications policy related to national security and emergency preparedness.

With the operational tempo of the war on terrorism increasing, cybersecurity has been one of several subjects NSTAC and BellSouth have been examining, Ackerman said. The issue of cybersecurity is of particular interest to BellSouth, he said, since about two-thirds of the information that flows over its networks today is computer data — not voice transmissions.

Because the United States is basically a network of computer networks, it is harder to safeguard against information warfare. Public and private computer networks are probed daily by hackers, he said. Some are just students who see hacking as a challenge, but others may be individuals seeking ways to perpetrate commercial or military espionage. Because of the Internet, the threat is magnified.

"In today's world, where the Internet has converged with the public switch network, the game has changed," Ackerman said. "I think most of us saw this a few months ago when we experienced that SQL Slammer worm. That worm moved faster than anything we have ever seen — within a matter of three hours it had infected hundreds and thousands of computers all over this country."

BellSouth Corp. is a Fortune 100 communications services company headquartered in Atlanta, serving more than 44 million customers in the United States and 14 other countries.

Ackerman was the featured speaker at the Terry Third Thursday executive speaker series, held on the third Thursday of each month at the Atlanta Financial Center in Buckhead. The program is co-sponsored by UGA's Terry College of Business, the Atlanta Business Chronicle and Public Broadcasting Atlanta.

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