AT&T to invest $1bn in enterprise mobility
Will allocate the sum to mobile and cloud services for businesses, expanding its connected devices program
Published: 11 May, 2011
As part of its push into the mobile enterprise, AT&T is to spend $1bn on mobility solutions and cloud services for medium to large companies this year.
The sum is part of the operator's previously announced capex budget of $19bn for 2011, and it will be divided between five key initiatives, many of them enabled by the rising use of business devices with embedded wireless. The most important of the five, said the firm, was advanced mobility solutions to support corporate usage and management of connected devices, including tablets, e-readers, netbooks and smartphones.
This is part of AT&T's blossoming strategy for emerging devices, in which it aims to connect millions of non-phone gadgets to its 3G and future 4G networks, generating additional data revenues but also the opportunity to create new value added services. In the latter respect, the enterprise and the machine-to-machine sectors are particularly important, since they are not just looking for simple mobile data plans, but for partners to help them create mobile applications, often centered on the cloud, and to manage the device explosion effectively.
AT&T added 1.6m emerging devices in the first quarter, bringing its total to 12m, with the products ranging from wireless medicine bottles (its highest ARPU embedded item) to smart meters. The company is also selling a growing range of gadgets through its own stores, even those - like the Amazon Kindle - where the wireless data connection is invisible to the user and does not require an AT&T contract.
The other four areas of new investment will be cloud services for global enterprise networking, small businesses and healthcare; plus new services for data storage and management. Business focused mobile vendors like RIM and Hewlett-Packard are increasingly offering cloud back-up, storage and apps services to increase loyalty to their devices, and HP's webOS strategy is entirely focused on constant cloud access from almost any kind of client product. AT&T, then, is keen to play a role in this trend, selling the always-on data connections as these become mission critical, but also acting as an integrator and device supplier.
More US News
More AT&T News
More CLOUD News
COMMENTS
Carrier Broadband Performance: Africa & Middle East
Carriers are using mobile broadband as their weapon of choice in the fight against the commoditization of voice and falling ARPU. This...
Voice over LTE: Market Analysis and Forecasts
VoLTE offer unique advantages in lowering a carrier's voice infrastructure economics and promises to improve voice quality, device...
Satellite Phones: Will Dual Mode Help the Phoenix Rise from the Ashes?
Satellite phones have followed an arduous path since their much-hyped launch more than a decade ago. The hype was followed by an e...
