U.S. wireless giant AT&T is banding together with global telecom equipment makers to ramp up innovative mobile applications whose popularity is on the rise following the success of Apple’s (News - Alert) app store.
AT&T will first review the concepts or ideas proposed by people and then ask its employees to convert them into commercial applications. The carrier has already identified facilities across the U.S., as well as Israel where the apps will be developed by high-skilled employees.
"We're tapping into cutting-edge design expertise in Silicon Valley, prototyping industry applications – from automotive to education services – in Plano and the deep skills in communications protocols and innovation that reside in Israel,” said John Donovan, AT&T's chief technology officer.
AT&T announced plans to work with Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert), Amdocs and Ericsson, at centers in Palo Alto, Calif.; Plano, Texas; and Ra'anana, near Tel Aviv, Israel. In the days to come, Cisco and Juniper Networks will also come on board as infrastructure providers and collaborators. The centers will provide an environment for developers to collaborate with AT&T (News - Alert) and its innovators, its host suppliers and other developers.
Not just the equipment makers like Alcatel-Lucent, Amdocs and Ericsson, the wireless carrier is also herding together venture capitalists to finance the development of such ideas.
Initial projects are already underway in temporary facilities, and new projects are being selected, said the carrier in a press release. AT&T plans to review as many as 400 proposals a year.
The carrier will focus on three key areas -- healthcare, online and mobile applications.
“The innovation centers will help us enhance collaboration and dramatically accelerate the velocity of innovation, taking ideas from concept to reality in mere months as opposed to years," said John Donovan (News - Alert).
Veteran application developer Peter Hill, who created many of the U-verse applications, has been tapped to lead innovation center at the capacity of vice president.
"The idea is to help innovators who have great ideas but lack resources by connecting them with the expertise and network that AT&T has been developing for decades," Hill said.
Part of the initiative is an online portal that will give developers the tools, support and customer access to help build, test and certify applications across a range of broadband platforms. The portal hosts a broad set of resources and will serve as a collaboration gateway with community forums, live chat with AT&T experts, development dashboards, and feedback from beta customers.
Narayan Bhat is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Narayan’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Tammy Wolf