Infoseek and Bell Atlantic Sign E-Commerce Deal

Telecommunications heavyweight Bell Atlantic has 43 million telephone access lines and nine million wireless customers worldwide. The company is now looking beyond telephone customers, however, and focusing on e-commerce.

On Thursday, leading search engine Infoseek (Nasdaq: SEEK), which is an anchor site for the GO Network, announced a three-year deal with Bell Atlantic. The companies will work together to enable small and medium-sized businesses to conduct e-commerce.

Infoseek and the GO Network will provide services including storefront and e-commerce site creation, Web hosting, marketing resources and shopping directory links.

Companies Will Share Revenue

Also, in a revenue-sharing agreement, Infoseek has selected Bell Atlantic’s BigYellow directory as the exclusive Yellow Pages shopping directory for the GO Network. Bell Atlantic will also be the exclusive yellow pages sales agent for businesses who use the GO Network for e-commerce services.

BigYellow, combined with GTE SuperPagesTM, is the leading shopping directory on the Internet and is also the exclusive online Yellow Pages service for America Online (NYSE: AOL) and AOL’s Digital City.

“BigYellow enables people to find shopping information for more than 11 million businesses across the United States,” said Mat Stover, president of Bell Atlantic’s directory group. “In addition, our Bell Atlantic sales people and affiliated channels will provide merchants with additional shoppers from GO Network and added e-commerce functionality through its GO Stores and GO Small Business Center.”

New Benefits For Bell Atlantic Customers

Bell Atlantic already provides Web-hosting services for businesses under the Web@Once brand. Bell Atlantic customers who use this service will now have access to information to manage their sites through the GO Network Small Business Center. Web sites sold by Bell Atlantic will now be featured on the shopping areas of the GO Network.

The GO Network Small Business Center includes information about marketing for online stores, tools to target advertising placements, and technical guidance for Web site administration.

“Combining the integrated commerce platform of GO Network with the experience Bell Atlantic brings in helping businesses attract customers and establish an online presence provides businesses with essential online solutions,” said Harry Motro, president and CEO of Infoseek. “In addition to delivering more than 20 million users, GO Network provides a comprehensive shopping solution for merchants to run their e-business operations.”