traffic

disclaimers

management

related
Guides:

Security &
Infocrime

Networks





related
Profile:

Aust & NZ
Spam law

     MMS

This page looks at MMS - variously identified as Multimedia Messaging Systems or Multimedia Messaging Service and sometimes characterised as a successor to SMS.

It covers -

• introduction
• the technology

     introduction

MMS involves delivery to a mobile phone (or to a device such as a PDA) of what is often characterised as 'rich messaging' or multimedia presentations.

Those presentations include pictures, animated postcards, screensavers, greeting cards, maps cartoons and business cards. MMS messages can feature text, sound, and moving/still images. They are typically designed for a small screen, rather than for a desktop monitor or traditional television screen.

The messages can originate from a database (eg that of a network operator or a third party, typically being sent to many consumers) or from the device of one consumer to another individual or handful of contacts.

As of 2005 global uptake of MMS has disappointed most enthusiasts. Expectations in 2002/3 were that consumer demand for multimedia services would -

• drive large-scale upgrading of consumer devices, with people abandoning old mobile phones in favour of new MMS-capable devices
• substantiate the billion dollar prices paid by telecommunication network operators for 3G licenses or their competitors
• result in emergence of a thriving 'rich media industry', as creatives and advertisers switched from television and the desktop web to delivery of advertisements and services to mobile phones
• embrace a wide range of person-to-person and value-added applications, including photo-messaging, 'm-greeting cards' and 'm-postcards', interactive games, map and directory services, news services, adult content and dating services.

That vision - along with hopes for large-scale mobile commerce - has not been substantiated. Uptake of MMS is low and primarily restricted to person-to-person applications, in particular sending photos taken with that phone/PDA to the owner's family or friends. Few commercial services make use of MMS.

Low uptake appears to reflect -

• high network charges, particularly for messages sent from one network to another
• lack/unreliability of infrastructure in some network locations, for example outside major cities or commuter spines
• difficulties in exchanging messages from network to another
• competition with other technologies, including SMS, email, Bluetooth and WAP
• unavailability of premium MMS offerings
• consumer discomfort in using a technology that is more complex than SMS

A 2005 study by Finland's telecoms regulator FICORA for example indicated that voice calls and text messages were still the main drivers of usage, with few respondents in its surveyreporting interest in multimedia messaging, mobile internet services or mobile e mail access. 98% of Finns own a mobile phone; around 47% have replaced their fixed line connection with a mobile.

     the technology

MMS embodies an open industry standard, created by the global Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) consortium and the WAP Forum.

MMS, like SMS standard, involves store-and-forward transmission of messages. Communication thus does not necessarily occur consistently on an instantaneous basis. It centres on SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language), an XML-based protocol that enables creation and transmission of PowerPoint-style presentations over a mobile device. Users are able to customise text and display set-up, timing of page presentations and the order of images and animations.

Sending images rather than unformatted text means that MMS files are typically much larger than SMS. A typical SMS message might be 140 bytes in size, in contrast to the average MMS presentation of around 50,000 bytes.




   next page  (IM)