| Differences between MMS in version 4 and 5 |  Search
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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through September 15, 2003 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Educa |
Dear Bryce, We are a company interested in offering MMS sending to our customers from our IVR application. This will mainly be to Belgian mobile phones, but could also be to others. Now I have a few little questions of which some allready got answered in helpfiles, but I would still like to ask them in very short format just to be sure. 1) Nowsms CAN send MMS to mobile phones ? 2) The only thing you need to send MMS is a compiled MMS file and NowSMS software ? 3) I read somewhere that version 5 can send the entire mms to our operators MMSC through a GSM connected to the pc. Version 4 only seems to be able tot Wap Push the SMS url ? correct ? 4) Of the 2 ways described above, is there 1 way which always works ? 5) What is the biggest difference then ? That with version 4 and the wap push we'd only have to pay for 1 sms and with version 5 which connects to our operator, we would have to pay for a full mms ? 6) We can send MMS by doing a http post to localhost on some kind of defined listening port ? 7) We can also send MMS by sending an email to an integrated mailserver in NowSMS ? Kind regards, Bart | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support |
Hi Bart,
Yes. I'll explain the v4.x vs. v5.x consideration below.
The MMS file does not need to be pre-compiled. An MMS message consists of a header and one or more multimedia objects (files). You can submit a pre-compiled MMS file to us, or you can submit the individual MMS message components, and let us compile them. You can submit either via an HTTP POST or via SMTP. The following threads have more information on the formats: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/12/113.html http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/12/85.html The v5.0 beta adds support for some other protocols, MM1 and EAIF (HTTP POST of binary MMS content), MM4 (SMTP-based) and MM7 (HTTP POST of MMS mesasge encoded in XML/SOAP document). Unfortunately, I don't have any pointers to references of those formats yet.
In v5.0, this approach needs to be a GSM/GPRS modem (or can be a GSM/GPRS phone for send only). See the attached thread for a pretty good explanation of how MMS works: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/12/196.html The delivery is the same (as described in the above link), whether the MMS message is delivered by an operator MMSC, or via the MMSC integrated into the Now SMS/MMS Gateway. The difference is in the MMS message content URL that contains the MMS message content. The MMS client in the mobile phone is configured with connectivity settings for sending and retrieving MMS messages. There is a setting for a GPRS APN, a WAP gateway address, and an MMS message server URL. When it comes to receiving MMS messages, its the GPRS APN and WAP gateway address that are important. Some mobile operators pre-configure their mobile phones with MMS settings that only allow MMS messages to be retrieved from the operator MMSC. So if you submit from an external MMSC (like NowSMS v4.x), then the phone receives an MMS notification, but it is unable to retrieve the MMS message content unless the settings on the phone are changed.
Usually going through the operator MMSC is safer. It is best to test the settings that the mobile operators in your region use ... and determine whether or not they are open to external MMSCs. If they are open, the using NowSMS as the MMSC is usually a better choice ... if they are closed, going through the operator MMSC is the only choice (unless you have a closed user community and can change the settings on your users' phones).
Cost is a definite issue ... as is the connectivity issue described above.
Yes, see the links above for HTTP POST details.
Yes, I also included a link above that talks about the SMTP connectivity. -bn | |||
