AT&T opened the first of three promised innovation centres, called AT&T Foundry and located in Plano, Texas. Developers working at the site will be able to access AT&T network capabilities and test beds, in addition to consulting with technology experts and project coaches. The Plano site is “an LTE test environment,” and has connectivity to AT&T Labs and other planned sites. Initial development tracks in AT&T’s programme include “telehealth, HTML5, new ways to deliver rich media, advanced check-in and location-based applications, and APIs that make network services easily available to developers.”

This permanent site is set to be joined by two others, in Palo Alto, California, and Ra’anana, Israel, which are planned to open later this year as part of a US$70 million investment. Alcatel-Lucent is the host supplier for the Plano facility, while Ericsson and Amdocs are involved in the other sites, respectively. Temporary centres have also been opened in Texas, California and Israel during 2010, and more than 24 multi-company projects are already underway.

Earlier this year, AT&T detailed its various developer initiatives, which includes a renewed commitment to Qualcomm’s Brew Mobile Platform to enable the creation of apps for mass-market devices. It is also working to promote HTML5 as an option for developers, with the intention of supporting this across a broad range of devices before the end of 2011.

According to a recent survey by Evans Data Corporation, AT&T was ranked top US operator by a number of developers, outperforming its rivals across categories including app distribution, tools, supported technologies and market potential. AT&T also has a “crowd-sourcing platform” called The Innovation Pipeline, and holds “speed data” proposal reviews to evaluate potential projects.