|
|
|
MMS: a new front in mobile communication
AFTER an extremely successful decade of transforming the way people communicate with voice and SMS, wireless operators are facing the challenge of shaping a new generation of users who want to use the freedom of mobility and the internet in radical new ways, offering personalized content anytime, anywhere.
Today many messaging services support short and plane text delivery only. However, many people would like to communicate with other people via various media, not only text, but also videos, still picture, sound etc. In addition, many people would like to edit, send, receive and see and/or listen those messages without any special skills to handle a lot of commands or functions. MMS addresses this.
The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is, as its name suggests, the ability to send and receive messages comprising a combination of rich media including text, sound, images, graphics and video to MMS capable handsets.
CEO of Mobile Streams Simon Buckingham says, “The transition from SMS to MMS is as important on mobile phones as the transition from DOS to Windows was for the PC. It represents a revolution.”
MMS represents a revolution to the end user in terms of richness of message content. However, it is delivered in an evolutionary manner from infrastructure suppliers’ point of view. A full-fledged MMS service needs an entirely different infrastructure and a completely changed network than that is needed for SMS. One of the major reasons of this is the highly variable message size of MMS - raising issues of traffic management, interconnect agreements and service pricing. However, MMS functionality would be delivered earlier. But the ultimate goal of all mobile operating companies is Multimedia Messaging Service that would take a few years from now to be fully available.
Working
The Multimedia Messaging Service is actually the key business case driver of the new emerging technology called Always-On. Always On will enable the people to be connected over the world of Internet using their cell phone at all times. The Always On service will be provided through 2.5G and 3G technologies. Most important of 2.5G technologies are GPRS and EDGE that give a maximum speed of 170 kilobits/s to 384 kbps. While, 3G is a set of three standards: W-CDMA, CDMA2000 and TD-CDMA giving a max speed of 2Mbps. Note that today’s GSM works on 9.6 kbps.
The 3G will be ubiquitous and seamless, enabling users to access data services like the Internet regardless of their location, local terminal or terminal type, enabling end users to benefit from higher levels of flexibility and quality of service.
However, the difficulty with 3G is that it is a network that doesn’t work with the existing systems. Because of this, the deployment of Multimedia Messaging Services needs up gradation of the current network infrastructure and changing of the existing devices with new MMS compliant ones to support rich multimedia content.
MMS will emerge in two phases — the first being the intermediary phase, will be based on any of the 2.G technologies as a bearer, rather than 3G. Because of this, initially, MMS will be similar to a short PowerPoint presentation on the mobile phones (a series of slides featuring colour graphics and sound but not video). In the second phase, it will be deployed on 3G offering all of its sophisticated features (full multimedia).
SMS Vs MMS
SMS was the first to emerge. It started as a simple person-to-person text messaging over GSM. In this format, SMS was popular because it was simple and ubiquitous.
SMS is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from cell phones, electronic mail, paging and voice mail. It’s a store and forward messaging service, which uses SMSC for storing messages. The text can comprise of words or numbers or an alphanumeric combination. Each message is up to 160 characters in length.
MMS is also a store and forward messaging service that uses MMSC for storing messages before message delivery. It allows sending of multiple media in a single message to multiple recipients. It is based on SMIL (pronounced “smile”).
The sender can easily create a Multimedia Message, either using a built-in or accessory camera, or can use images and sounds stored previously in the phone. In delivering message, if the recipient phone is not switched on, the message will be stored in MMSC and sent to the recipient as soon as they switch on their phone. A number of Multimedia Messages can be stored in the users handset and reviewed or forwarded at a later date.
A multimedia message contains number of pages. Each page can have either of image, text, audio or video. The time each page is displayed on the mobile screen can also be specified, so the user experience is somewhat like a slide show.
MMS introduces a new concept of user profile. Full fledged MMS requires entirely different set of network called 3G.
Advantages
The multimedia messaging service is the key business case driver for not only GPRS and EDGE but also of the 3G-business case and will contribute to a huge amount to earnings on 3G investments. From the current capabilities of SMS, MMS greatly expands the capabilities of P2P messaging in terms of:
• The amount of text supported.
• The amount of non-text content (audio, video, image).
• The ease with which messages are composed.
• The sender’s reach - since MMS messages can be sent both to phone numbers and to email addresses.
Many of the features and utilities that are routinely used on PCs today such as screensavers, personalization of desktops, viruses, plug-ins, presentations, photos, letters, telegrams, telexes, greeting cards and the like will migrate over to the mobile phones too.
In the end, we would like to show some real world figures to show how successful the 3G and MMS would be.
In Japan, NTT DoCoMo has launched it’s iMode service in Feb 1999, which is the clearest example of how MMS services will look and be used in terms of terminals, services, content sites and revenue generation. NTT had 27 million subscribers by Aug ‘01 with an increasing rate of 50,000 users per day. It earned revenue of $37 billion in the year 2000 and has a monthly average revue per user (ARPU) of $9. NTT earns 9 per cent of the total revenue from the iMode services; the content providers earn the rest.
These are some of the facts of NTT DoCoMo’s stunning success that clearly reflect users’ hungriness and market urge towards 3G and MMS.
After all these facts one can simply imagine what the hype is all about but one has to keep his fingers crossed to see whether the MMS technology will be up to the expectations or not. Lets hope we experience a new era of technology and that this emerging technology lives up to its expectations.
Farooq Umar
|
|
|
|
