Great post. I particularly like this comment: They need/want a marketplace where transactions occur and they already have a billing relationship w/ the subscriber.

Here’s the problem – opportunity. What about billing information from the other carrier. What if they could get that in real time every time some accessed say the buzz.com web site.

That’s huge.

Here’s some other ideas… re AT&T and Buzz

Competitive Intelligence: Access to directly market to competitors’ customers: (via name, phone number, IMEI number, email address)
Recapture Lost Revenue: They can extend their service off the network to existing AT&T and any customer (roaming & Wi-Fi connected customers)
New Revenue: They can personalize and/or localize ads & charge a premium
New Revenue: They can charge a premium fee for personalized or “friend” group location-based services
Competitive Advantage/Reduce Time to Market: They could easily incorporate existing services (ie. movie reviews, restaurant reviews) into Buzz branded composite service without having to innovate, build or host all the individual services.
New Revenue: They can share/sell the data with the originating service providers, advertisers or local merchants – the First Data trusted manager scenario (see their site for additional white papers on this)

All the need is the customers meta data in real time.

Hope all’s well in Boulder.

http://stevecheney.posterous.com/twenty-four-companies-unite-to-kill-apple-huh

This is an incredibly insightful post. You’ve just nailed the Carrier’s business problem. They need to drive net new services revenue without driving up network expenses. Only way to do this is to do it across other carrier platforms.