AT&T in the NetBook / Mini-PC Game

This weekend I was surfing around the AT&T website trying to decide what my next BlackBerry will be (it's a toss-up between an old-school Pearl and a new-school Bold).

I discovered the following placeholders - NetBook and Mini-PC. These were well hidden and there wasn't any products included within the placeholders but it started me thinking. What if AT&T was also my computing provider (at the client side).

I have an iPhone and they suck at getting it 3G service (everyone I know has issues with this). The call dropping and quality is just dismal. They are behind the times on implementing tethering, MMS and upgrading their data network to keep pace with the demand. It also sucks that they can't figure out how to package WiFi + Data Card + iPhone in some usable/economically happy way.

Now they clearly must be planning a marketing spin toward non-AT&T customers because anyone who has already depended on AT&T knows better.

So the logic of cloud computing and thin clients end up converging here at the NetBook from AT&T. They create am incentive for you to buy their NetBook+Wireless data plan and thus build a business model based on transport/connectivity (to and from) the cloud. It's just interesting to see that in the consumer world, they are counting on transport to be their leverage point (as far as I can see).

The model of discounting equipment in order to lock-in to a service seems somewhat wrong to me. There are lawyers far smarter than me that can determine if there is an anti-trust issue somewhere in the "tying" market, what is certain is that it doesn't feel right.

If AT&T jumps into this market using the same dodgy service they have had already and they combine it with a contractual tie-in to a NetBook, it could easily ruin any customer base it has.