Was reading the New York Times online and saw that AT&T are going to be streaming videos to certain phones.

Awesome, first they lock-in the iPhone, and now they are going to set a standard for how NOT to provide mobile content.

What I mean is that AT&T  is planing to not only run advertising in the looped full-length movies, but since they are looped they are not going to make them available on-demand. This is horrible – it’s like those looped movies on airplanes – they never sync up and once the film on channel 1 is over – the movie on channel 2 is halfway through, etc. Stupid.

But wait, it gets even better! (Or worse.)

AT&T is only planning to roll out movies in partnership with Sony (yet another lock-in play), and those movies will be films that have already been released to DVD and/or seen TV distribution.

So, basically, AT&T is going to have a revolving loop of some crappy films no one cares about on phones no one wants to buy. That is some fine brand management there…

Coming soon to a phone near you!