While we are often critical of the mobile operators’ slowness to face up to the new world of open networks and services, AT&T is a major exception. The US giant is determined to help write the rules of the new telecoms sector, rather than be tripped up by them later. In so doing, it will hope to defend the interests of the established operators against the web companies which would like to steal their market – by behaving more like those web providers. Whether or not it succeeds, it will have contributed significantly to the wider industry process, in terms of technology and also by showing how a new-look modern telco might work. It has already initiated two industry groups…