Back-office play beneath the surface?

AT&T Mobility will be the first commercial user of Microsoft's Surface technology, a table-sized touch-screen that AT&T will use to let customers learn about — and eventually perhaps even provision — new wireless devices.

The slick interactive kiosk will hit AT&T retail stores beginning April 17 in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, San Antonio and San Francisco. When customers pick up a phone and place it on the touch-screen, Surface will automatically recognize the device and display information about the phone and available services, rate plans and more. Multitouch hand gestures let users manipulate the data on screen.

“When I saw this technology, the light bulbs really went off,” said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility.

For now, AT&T is using Surface for marketing and education — and the pizzazz factor. Down the line, de la Vega said, customers may be able to use it to start migrating data and settings to a new device and launch the provisioning process. AT&T has been at the forefront of online provisioning at wireless.att.com and with partner Apple in enabling out-of-the-box set-up of the iPhone.