AT&T, seeking to compete with Google Drive, Amazon Glacier, Dropbox and other free, cloud-based storage offerings, on Thursday released Locker, a photo- and video-sharing service for AT&T customers that offers 5 GB of storage.

The service gives users the ability to upload and secure images and videos, and is intended for consumers to share on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or email. They can also store music and other files in AT&T Locker storage. The application is compatible with iPhone versions back to 3GS.

[Related: 10 Free Cloud Storage Options]

Customers seeking additional storage can pay an extra $3.99 a month for 30 GBytes of storage or$9.99 a month for an additional 100 GBytes.

With the offering, AT&T is seeking to serve and widen the customer base that uses its home-based Internet products. "[AT&T] looks like it's aiming at individuals with what I call a personal cloud offering, saying, 'You already use us for services such as landline, wireless and TV, you should use us for this, too, for file syncing and sharing,'" said Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst with Forrester Research.

"This looks like a straight consumer play, like the way Dropbox started out, and eventually, perhaps they will do something more," he added.

The service offers a feature called Easy Upload, which enables automatic photo uploading on a user's device to the AT&T Cloud. AT&T plans to announce additional features in future versions of AT&T Locker.

"With Easy Upload, every photo and video is uploaded directly to AT&T's cloud, which can be accessed safely and securely anytime from a customer's smartphone or the Web," Mark Collins, senior vice president, Data and Voice Products, AT&T Mobility, said in a statement.

PUBLISHED NOV. 1, 2012