Earthlink's battle for broadband customers
EarthLink's Garry Betty fights telcos and cable companies for broadband customers.
One of the tougher jobs in high tech is making a transition from a dying technology to a thriving one. Such is the task of Garry Betty, CEO of one of the nation's oldest Internet service providers. Without benefit of a built-in wire to people's homes (an advantage of the telcos and cable companies), he has to move his base from dial-up service to broadband. (Currently only 1.7 million of his customers are high-speed; he has 2.1 million dial-up customers as well as 1.4 million low-price dial-up customers from the former People PC company.) Betty is looking forward to voice-over-Internet schemes, mobile phones (like an investment with Helio, a youth-oriented start-up begun by EarthLink's founder, Sky Dayton) and providing Wi-Fi to municipalities like Anaheim, Calif., and Philadelphia. Betty, 49, joined EarthLink in 1996, after leaving a job at Digital Communications Associates (where he was the youngest CEO on the New York Stock Exchange). He talked to us by landline about EarthLink's challenges.