By Sinead Carew
NEW YORK, Jan 6 (Reuters) - AT&T Inc plans to givecash-strapped consumers options to save money on mobile datafees as soon as this quarter while offering sponsors a new wayto entice consumers to use their services.
The company said it will announce details on Monday atAT&T's developer conference at the Consumer Electronics Show.The offering will let sponsors subsidize consumer's data fees,which have gradually gotten more expensive in recent years asphone companies charge for mobile web-surfing based on how muchdata their customers download.
AT&T, the No. 2 U.S. mobile operator, compared the offeringto 1-800 telephone services where businesses such as floristspay for inbound calls with a view to attracting more consumers.
It will start with deals from companies including a healthinsurer, an advertiser and a software firm but may expand tobusinesses ranging from media companies to retailers.
AT&T and its rival Verizon Wireless have bothtalked about the idea of offering sponsored data for two years,but the plans have been slow to materialize as the operatorssought partners and worked out how best to offer the service.
AT&T's first partners include insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc, Boston-based advertising start-up Aquto andOrlando-based mobile software developer Kony Solutions.
It said the offering could also work well for retail, media,entertainment and financial services customers or could be usedby employers aiming to sponsor their own workers' data usage forcertain corporate applications.
Under the new service, AT&T said data charges from use ofsponsored content would be billed directly to the sponsor and will appear on the consumer's invoice as sponsored data.
For example AT&T said that UnitedHealth customers could viewhealthcare information or videos from their insurer withoutincurring data or customers using Aquto's service could watchads without incurring data fees.
Kony customers, which include hoteliers, could potentiallyuse its reservation systems to let customers book hotel roomswhile on the go without having to pay AT&T for the airtime.
Mark Collins, AT&T senior vice president for voice and dataproducts, said the service would complement existing dataservices for cost-conscious customers.
Collins declined to disclose financial arrangements for theservice but said that agreements would differ between sponsorsdepending on their agreements and that some companies willengage in revenue-sharing deals with the operator.
ReconAnalytics analyst Roger Entner said UnitedHealth was agood launch partner for AT&T because it could provide animportant service by giving lower-income consumers easier accessto key health information.
"Consumers will like it. Americans always like 'free',"Entner said.
Jan Dawson, analyst at Jackdaw Research worried that unlessAT&T provides strong safeguards there could be a potential forfraud if providers of bandwidth-hungry applications falselyclaim to be offering sponsored data.
But he said that the service was an important milestonesince it would mark the first time an operator would chargesomeone other than its customers for its data services.
"It will have the biggest impact for applications involvingvideo, since that's the biggest driver of bandwidth consumption,but it will be useful for other services too," Dawson said.
AT&T said sponsored data will be delivered at the same speedas any non-sponsored content. It will provide more details alongwith executives from the three sponsors it named to an audienceof developers and media at the CES show in Las Vegas.
Vodafone (VOD)
