Greg McCastle, svp for advertising and publishing at AT&T, echoed Jonathan Miller's comments from prior panel about adding value if companies are expecting to consumers to pay for social media
services. But AT&T and the other major wirless carriers already have an advantage over their online counterparts b/c people already expect to pay for everything in mobile--extra fees for data
services like video or music and 20 cents a pop for text messages. The carriers want to maintain those fee-based services while adding advertising so they have the dual-revenue of of the cable
companies.
But before they think about adding new social media or other services, carriers, have to make sure they have the networks in place to handle the additional data demand.AT&T's
well-publicized difficulties meeting demand from the iPhone highlights that challenge.
