BellSouth is offering customers a free home monitoring camera if they sign up for DSL service at 1.5 Megabit per second or above. The company also is trialing its own home monitoring service, and new customers can chose to become part of that trial.

The promotion provides a free home monitoring camera which customers can use to view the inside of their homes from remote locations, including laptop PCs and cellphones. Customers can use the camera with any home monitoring service, according to a BellSouth spokeswoman.

BellSouth is conducting its trial of home monitoring – separate of the promotional offer – and has made that service available to current customers of its BellSouth FastAccess HomeNetworking Plus offer, which links up to four computers in a wireless network. Those customers pay an additional $5 a month to get installation help and technical support for their home networks.

“Our home networking customers have received marketing materials from us that offer them a chance, for $9.95, to have BellSouth set up and provide technical support for home monitoring,” the spokeswoman said. “New customers who get a free camera would be eligible for the home monitoring trial, if they buy the home networking service.”

The purpose of the home monitoring trial is to determine whether it is feasible for BellSouth to offer such a service going forward, the spokeswoman said.

BellSouth’s DSL offerings include services with download speeds of up to 1.5 Megabits per second; 3 mb/s and 6 mb/s.