One of the giants of US telephony - and of course, the exclusive provider of the iPhone in America - AT&T finds itself in a strong position when it comes to mobile gaming.

Glenn Broderick, executive director of gaming at AT&T's Converged Services Group, says things are only going to get better in future.

"Games have been a great revenue line for us but particularly in these economic times, we're seeing the rise of games as a cheap form of entertainment," he says. "It's got the attention of the highest levels of management at AT&T and I anticipate we are going to be doing some pretty cool things soon."

And considering this is a company which posted annual revenues of $119 billion in 2008, it certainly should have the firepower to shake things up.

Pocket Gamer: To start with, can you explain what the Converged Gaming Group is all about?

Glenn Broderick: We've been around since January 2007 in one form or another and we operate under the Converged Services Group. The idea is there's value in tying together gameplay experiences, whether that be the consumption of games you can buy on your cellphone and also play on your PC, or interoperability where you are participating via your mobile in some shape or form in a game that based on a console, a PC, or set-top box.

That's a big area, so what are the immediate focuses?

Initially we're building a platform that can accommodate the vision. This isn't very sexy. In fact it's very technical and very costly.

Obviously we have an existing mobile platform that allows us to sell games to customers, which is robust and provides a simple shopping experience. However, we recently did a moderate redesign of our game channel at att.net, which is the gaming home page for AT&T customers, and that resulted in a 15 fold increase in revenue. So we're now tearing it down and rebuilding both the back and frontend.

We're also exploring our options with respect to an IPTV gaming solution. We already have what I call some proof of concept games live, but they don't have features such as sound or multiplayer. But relative to the adoption rates of other services, they have an enormous attach rate so our goal is to get something as robust and high quality as our customers would expect from AT&T.

Once we've sorted out those three, we'll be working with our partners in the game publishing and development community to figure out what's the right experience for integrating these elements.

For example, most existing games aren't candidates for interoperability, but there are some genres - for example MMOGs or strategy games - that would work in terms of having a mobile component added to the console and PC experience rather than trying to compete with it.

Would AT&T commission any games?

No. We're not going to be in the game publishing business. We're in the business of making a platform that enables people to distribute games. But we can incentivise publishers. For example, last year we did a deal with Activision over Guitar Hero World Tour Complete. That involved millions of pieces of direct mail and presence in over 2,500 retail locations. The marketing cost was substantial: definitely in the millions of dollars.

I think in similar ways we can offset the risk for publishers who are interested in tethering a mobile experience to a PC or console game. It won't be us giving them money though. It will be a case of we're partners. We want this to succeed and we will do everything we can to help this succeed by exposing it to 100 million of our customers.

Do you think there is a big commercial opportunity for such interoperable games?

Sure. I think there is big business potential here. The stuff that's currently on mobile is fun and a great way to pass the time but the potential is for it to be a key component, augmenting the core gaming experience

The example I use is EA's Majestic, which came out in 2001, ten years ahead of its time. With the technology we have now I think a game like Majestic could be bigger than any of the current MMOGs.

Another example is when Sony demonstrated Gran Turismo running on PS3 with the PSP serving as a the rear view mirror. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's what we refer to internally as 'meaningful interoperability' in that you're not taking the code from the console game and trying to recreate the experience on the small screen. You play to the device's strengths and augment the experience you're seeing on your TV screen.

How much of an obstacle is the fact that such services will presumably only be available to AT&T customers?

Our business is all about keeping our customers happy and making sure our service is the best so there are challenges around opening it up. You have to remember though that including mobile, wired and IPTV services, we're closed to 100 million customers so going exclusive with AT&T isn't like going exclusive with a retail chain with only 10 stores. You don't need a very high adoption rate to make a very profitable business.

How does your iPhone exclusivity fit into this?

Of course, we love iPhone but the iPhone games business is Apple's business. More generally, though, iPhone is raising awareness of mobile games as a viable means of entertainment, so that's a boon for us.

You'd be surprised by the data we collect from our customers. For example, many people who routinely play casual games online have no idea they can play a game on their cellphone. That Apple is spending money on TV spots to promote iPhone gaming only helps our non-iPhone mobile gaming business.

Thanks to Glenn for his time.