AT&T has launched a new content delivery service to compete with Akamai, the industry leader in content distribution.

AT&T has partnered with several companies -- ExtendMedia, Qumu and Stratacache -- to offer streaming video, webcasting, advertising and other products to enterprise customers for B2B and B2C applications.

AT&T is well positioned to enter this arena, counting a huge number of companies among its client base which should make rolling out the product significantly easier than a company just entering the CDN arena.

The official statement on the new service, supplied to the Standard by an AT&T spokesman, stresses security and mobility:

"The services AT&T will deliver through its $70 million commitment for 2008 alone will help companies securely package, deliver and distribute video and rich multimedia web content across their networks to the three screens that are core to AT&T’s video strategy -- the computer, the television and mobile computing devices."

AT&T hopes to become a "one-stop shop" for customers wishing to deliver video content to their clients. This will be a relatively small market for AT&T, but the company should have the marketing and engineering muscle to make a serious play.

An AT&T spokesperson we spoke with told us that the service is designed for "any size business -- even small firms." This could be helpful for upstart Web 2.0 video providers like Viddler and Ustream.tv who are constantly looking for better ways to scale -- as well as giants like YouTube and Hulu, who are serving up huge numbers of videos to all manner of platforms.

Hulu on my (AT&T serviced) iPhone? Yes, please.

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