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Following in the footsteps of top rival Verizon, AT&T has announced that they, too, will encourage third party programmers to develop applications for their network. Yesterday, they released Universal Design documents, which detail how to create applications for the company. They feel that by taking this tack, they will be able to harness the power of outside developers while still creating applications that their customers desire. This continues the trend towards openness that we’ve seen recently in the wireless world. Verizon actually takes the idea a step further, as they are allowing third party developers to create phones for their network.

Now, any developer can use the “style guide” to create a program and submit it to AT&T for certification. If approved, the program will be available on its mobile site, MEdia Mall, and offered to its customers. Customers who buy those applications would be billed by AT&T, with the revenue split between it and the developer, [spokesman Fletcher] Cook said.

Although neither Verizon’s nor AT&T’s programs are truly “open” in the purest sense, they’re still taking steps in the right direction. It is much cheaper, obviously, to have outside programmers take a heavy workload, and then pay them a commission on sales. It also can lead to the development of better applications, since many of the new programmers do it out of passion, not for money.

This comes a week after Apple released a software developer kit for the iPhone. That garnered over 100,000 downloads in the first four days, though AT&T likely won’t see that many that quickly. The iPhone still has novelty quality, after all.

Roger Entner, head of communications practice at IAG Research, puts this into perspective:

“Open access is a win-win for carriers,” Entner said. “If it works, they’ll make more money and get the government off their backs. If it doesn’t work, they can say they tried.”

I have a feeling it will work, and it will work well. Hey, if IBM can do it, so can the big telecoms.

[CNN Money]

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