Some may have been surprised to find that the camera phone they got for
Christmas couldn't send pictures to phones on other networks. Three UK mobile
phone networks have now made the first step to remedy the situation.
Orange, mmO2 and T-Mobile have begun to correct one of the dirty little
secrets of the widely hyped Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) technology:
that it does not work across different companies' networks.
MMS, marketed by Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and mmO2 under names such
as picture messaging or photo messaging, was introduced with great fanfare
in the latter part of last year, as part of the network operators' plans
for recouping billions of pounds spent on next-generation technology.
But the initial services could not send images directly to friends using
competitors' networks.
European mobile phone companies have spent about 100bn euros, or about
£65m, on licences and technology for 3G networks, which will bring
greater capacity and speeds high enough for video communications. Handsets
with colour screens, tiny cameras and MMS capabilities were heavily touted
in the run-up to Christmas, despite the lack of network interconnection.
However, a new report argues that MMS revenues are unlikely to add up
to the panacea that mobile operators are hoping for.
The report from Datamonitor, released on Monday, predicts that the MMS
market will grow at a rate of 388 percent per year for four years, but
will still only be worth $4.9bn (or about £3bn) per year, by the
end of 2006.
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