AT&T sponsored data plan to target e-commerce sites

Sites that sell are interested in paying for access to AT&T’s customers, according to the company that is helping the carrier launch its sponsored data program. Syntonic is acting as the middle man between AT&T and the content providers.
“We did the deals with the content providers and we did the deals with AT&T and we are in the middle,” said Syntonic co-founder Gary Greenbaum. He would not say which content providers he has on board, but he did elaborate on the types of providers that want to offer sponsored data.
“There are some very clear opportunities for certain categories of content,” he said. “For example, transactional, shopping oriented websites and applications where it’s very clear that the cost of carriage for those sorts of applications is covered by the transactions. The other types of sites offer premium to premium type conversion, some sort of base level newspaper or magazine type experience, where if you want more you actually purchase that.”
Right now the sponsored data program is in beta testing, and Greenbaum is hoping to recruit 1,000 users to test it. He said the beta will roll out first to Android smartphones, then to iPhones and then to tablets. Greenbaum is eager to learn how people use sponsored data, and thinks his deal with AT&T could be the beginning of something even bigger.
“We’d like to expand beyond that because there are all kinds of commercial stories that come into play when you start selling or enabling content,” said Greenbaum. “It’s not just a consumer play. It could be your employer, it could be your school district, it could be your healthcare provider.”
Syntonic has already done one deal with a school district that will pay to give students guaranteed access to educational apps, and Greenbaum said he had his pick of school districts who were eager to participate in a trial.
Trained as a physicist, Greenbaum turned to software when the government shut down the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993. He wrote code for RealVideo and managed Microsoft’s mobile broadband service platform for Windows before starting Syntonic 18 months ago. Greenbaum foresees a large portion of mobile content eventually moving to a business model similar to that of cable television, where providers pay for access to the network and then sell ads to make a profit. Greenbaum admits that in a world of limited bandwidth, streaming video might not fit this model, but he believes that a lot of mobile content will migrate to a sponsored model.
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