MULTIMEDIA MESSAGING SERVICES
ABSTRACTMultimedia Messaging Service (MMS) adds images, text, audio clips and ultimately, video clips to SMS (Short Message Service / text messaging). Simon Buckingham, CEO of Mobile Streams believes that: 'The transition from Short Message Service (SMS) to Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is as important on mobile phones as the transition from DOS to Windows was for the PC. It represents a revolution.' Unlike other technologies like WAP, Bluetooth etc - MMS offers a complete development and billing environment along with a chance to create compelling applications. Thus, MMS provides an opportunity to foster an industry where all players in the value chain may get an opportunity to earn revenue.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a messaging service for the mobile environment that has been standardised by the WAP forum and 3GPP. To the end user, MMS is very similar to the short message service: it provides automatic and immediate delivery of user-created content. The addressing used is the phone-number of the recipient and the bulk of the MMS traffic goes from phone to phone. MMS also provides support for e-mail addressing. Hence,messages can also be sent from phone to e-mail and back. In addition to content type used for SMS text , MMS messages can contain still Images, voice or audio clip, and presentation information. A multimedia message is a multimedia presentation created by the sender using, for example predefined templates alternatively the content can be obtained ready made from a third-party content provider.The message can be delivered using to a push to the recipient’s phone and the recipient is notified only after the whole message has been received. MMS transport is carried out using WAP protocols and any bearer capable of supporting WAP can be used. Therefore MMS is bearer independent, i.e, MMS is not only limited to only GSM or WCDMA. the wireless session protocol(WSP) specified in the WAP forum, is used for message transport from phone to MMSC and from MMSC to phone. in addition WAP push features are used to deliver the message from the serverto the recipient. MMS uses WAP protocols, but is a separatephone application, independent from the browser. As the MMS concept is built upon SMS the target of service is to bring a new facility to the mass market of MMS users.
