AT&T is launching an Innovation & Interoperability program aimed at enabling its partners to build products and design services that will be compatible with AT&T’s VoIP portfolio.

Charter Members of the program include chip manufacturers Broadcom, Centillium, Intel and Texas Instruments; CPE vendors D-Link, Linksys, and NETGEAR; IP PBX makers Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Nortel Networks, and Siemens, and softswitch/gateway provider Sonus Networks.

This alliance program will allow AT&T tremendous access to and partnership opportunities with the IP telephony industry’s leading equipment and development platform companies. The move is clearly aimed at solidifying AT&T’s offering and driving AT&T-branded VoIP services into the mainstream.

The release announcing the VoIP Innovation and Interoperability Program can be found here.