@ CTIA: Billboard: AT&T Consumer Data VP Hypes Napster Deal

DSC04129Billboard Mobile Entertainment Live kicked off with Mark Collins, VP of Consumer Data for AT&T, talking up the extended deal with Napster (NSDQ: NAPS) announced earlier today. Collins even trotted out Paul Doucette of Matchbox 20 to try and hype up the service, stressing its ease of use and the dual-download feature that lets users download tracks both to their mobile and PC.

Collins did his best to portray the service as something new and different, but AT&T (NYSE: T) really is playing catch-up to other operators here. It doesn’t appear that the new Napster service from AT&T offers anything that’s not available on download stores from Sprint (NYSE: S) and Verizon. It’s also following those operators by charging a premium price for tracks: $3 for a single song, or 5 for $7.50. These high prices come despite Collins’ admission that “consumers haven’t shown us a willingness to pay for this product yet.”

Collins said he’s very interested in technologies that allow users to personalize and customize the data services they use. “The future is all about customer choice” and AT&T’s goal is to offer individual users the experience they want, rather than a one-size-fits-all bundle of services.

In terms of business models, Collins said that the future will likely see a combination of existing ones, such as paid downloads and carrier deals, with new ones, like advertising. He gave no hint of how this will work for external content providers, or if AT&T will try to remain the gatekeeper for all the content and services its customers access — despite his repeated insistence that customer choice is central to its data and content strategy.

On the iPhone: Nothing new. The impact of the iPhone on the overall marketplace has been huge, Collins said, since it’s motivated other handset vendors to respond with their own integrated devices, and to pay more attention to user interfaces and mobile browsing: “This experience is raising the bar for all providers,”

700 MHz auction: A coy, safe reply to a question from interviewer Mark Desautels (VP-wireless internet development, CTIA) of whether AT&T will be in the 700 MHz auction: “I would think a company of our size would at least be thinking of it.”

Our CTIA conference coverage is sponsored by Cellfish.

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