MMS Arrives For the iPhone — Will It Crash AT&T's Network? 153
itwbennett writes "AT&T has said it is already seeing 'record traffic during peak hours of the night' with just the users selected for testing, and so it is 'very nervous' about the spike in traffic that it expects will occur after it launched MMS service for iPhones on Friday. Of course, setting records for MMS traffic isn't that great a feat considering that 'the service in question has been out for years on other handsets and hasn't exactly taken the mobile world by storm. In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.' However, the carrier's fears in one respect may have been justified, says ABI analyst Dan Shey: 'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:3, Informative)
Not true in the US. I know many people who work at VZW and ones who work at ATT Wireless. The way the networks handle MMS is completely different. My friend on ATT can send me a pic or video, which comes in fine, when I go to forward to another VZW user it reports the MMS is too large.
Also, I can send a picture to a few people I know.. all but 1 is on VZW. The one who isn't is on ATT since that's who he's working for. Half of the time, all the VZW people will get it, but he will receive a MMS with nothing in it. On some occasions, it will happen when he MMS's a message to me.
I am glad that VZW->ATT and ATT->VZW texting has finally sped up. It use to take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour for a text from my VZW phone to any one of my friends ATT phones to make it.
.... only in the US (Score:3, Informative)
I'm quite surprised iPhone hasn't had MMS yet. It has been on phones since like 2003.
Not surprisingly, this is only the case in the US. Same with the AT&T lock-in.
Here, iPhones can send/receive MMS just fine for a long while already, and I can plug any SIM card in it and it just works.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:5, Informative)
Well, there are a couple of things that you got wrong here. First, overpriced or not, unlimited MMS is included as a part of the data plan you have to buy from AT&T when you have an iPhone. So cost won't matter.
No, actually, it's not. It was, back when the first iPhone came out, but now you're required to get a $30 data plan that includes no SMS or MMS messages. I pay for those at the a la carte rate of $.20 and $.30 each, respectively. If I sent more than 5 a month, I might consider an Messaging plan at an additional $5 to $30 a month, depending on which plan. But it's certainly NOT included in the price of the iPhone data plan.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:5, Informative)
First, overpriced or not, unlimited MMS is included as a part of the data plan you have to buy from AT&T when you have an iPhone.
Actually the US AT&T base iPhone data plan doesn't include SMS nor MMS. For $5 you can add 200 SMS/MMS. (I'm on the family plan)
I really don't see myself using MMS all that much -- after all, I've got a full-featured mobile email client. I have some younger relatives with cheapie feature phones that occasionally send us cameraphone snaps, though, and this will beat the crap out that horrible viewmymessage.com torture we had to go through before.
Re:.... only in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Here, iPhones can send/receive MMS just fine for a long while already [....]
Since June 17th, 2009 -- approximately 3 months ago.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:4, Informative)
I was thinking that too. In Europe, *every* phone has MMS, with the possible exception of some older Blackberries which don't have cameras, and the "easy to use no frills phones" marketed to older people. I don't think there are any of those on the market at the moment.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, sorry, you're absolutely right. I was confusing some of the salesman's spiel with some of the things we rearranged on our plan to switch to the iPhones.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:3, Informative)
MMS also works/ed on my SE T68i, which was a slight update of the T68 from what, 2001? I didn't send many messages, but from what I remember it was pretty easy to use and worked well.
As far as I can tell, MMS didn't catch on here was because they were ridiculously expensive. Vodafone, which I use, prices them at 65 cents per message, independently of the plan you have. Even if you're on the cheapest monthly plan, this works out to over 2 minutes of talk time per message, and gets more silly for more expensive plans. T-Mobile and O2 seem to have slightly more reasonable prices, but not by much.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't really have problems with vzwatt texting recently, but in my (limited and recent) experience with texting between Sprint and ATT, it's a huge excercise in futility.
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:4, Informative)
SMS needs no configuration as its built into the base GSM system as part of the control channel, GRPS builds on that and leave a lot of the config on the phone (DNS/DHCP), MMS is basically a special SMS (that the user will never see unless they use a very old phone in the GSM sense) that results in a download by GPRS from a carrier operated server...
Re:MMS is pretty pointless after all (Score:4, Informative)
The majority of phones that I have used required some special set up to use MMS and GPRS; usually sending a SMS to register for those services then receiving a message back containing automatically installing settings.
What happens when you "register for MMS" (either explicitly or implicitly by sending a MMS using the known settings) is that a MMSC (MMS Center, one of possibly many your carrier operates) is assigned to you (or rather, your Subscriber ID). Once that assignment is committed to the HLR database, incoming MMS for you will be forwarded tho that specific MMSC; without this assignment, you will only get a text message ("A MMS was received but we don't know how to reach you").
Sending a MMS is simply a "HTTP post" that uploads a "MMS Send request" (including your content as as MIME-Multipart Message) to the MMSC (Which then has to figure out how to forward it to the recipient(s) listed).
Receiving a MMS is the hard part: the MMSC sends a binary short message to your mobile, telling it "please fetch MMS at "http://$addr-of-mmsc/some-unique-but-hard-to-guess-id". (Insert lots of cursing about MMSC vendors whose software creates URLs so bloated that the Notification message gets longer than ~120 Bytes, causing it to be split into two SMS that need to be reassembled on them mobile).
If/When you decide to download the message
The MMS protocol contains a lot of functionality (message forwarding, permanent storage for messages, reverse charging, user selectable send/expiry times, ...) that never reached the customer. And with the limited features offered by the carriers (at premium prices nonetheless) MMS was dead in the water even before the advent of email-capable mobiles and "unlimited data" options.
Re:I won't be doing it. (Score:2, Informative)