MMS interoperability

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Bob Williams
Unregistered guest
Posted on Sunday, December 19, 2004 - 02:36 pm:   

I've been doing some research into MMS interoperability. Its actually the phone companys that block access to other countrys phone networks.

If they did not block access to there mms server using ip blocks then you could send mms worldwide.

even the mms apn of your phone network has an outside block, but change the apn to your wap or internet apn bang it works. only to receive, but your mms url won't be recognised because of ip block.

So if every phone company released there ipblock it be great cos you could send your grandma in timbukto a photo from the family in the UK.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3810
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Thursday, December 30, 2004 - 06:14 pm:   

Yes. Although most phone company's MMSCs are behind firewalls ... and if you change to use the wap or internet APN you can receive from external MMSCs, but not from the operator MMSC.

The http://www.nowsms.com/howmmsworks.htm page has some more info on these issues.

But I will raise one point to defend the mobile phone operators and the blocking.

Outside of the US, the general model for how mobile phone billing works is that the calling party pays, and it is free to receive a call on a mobile phone.

The same model was applied to SMS, where the sending party pays to send an SMS, but it is free for the recipient.

Now take that same model forward to MMS. In order to make MMS free for the receiver, GPRS traffic related to MMS transactions needs to be segregated from other GPRS traffic. To facilitate this, many mobile operators have setup a separate GPRS APN for MMS traffic, and users are not charged for data traffic over this APN. To prevent abuse of this free APN, access on this APN is limited so that you can only connect to the operator MMSC.

So, while there is an inclination to be frustrated with the mobile operators for blocking off access to external MMSCs, there's really an underlying billing complexity involved, and that was more important for why some operators have deployed separate APNs.

-bn
clement
Unregistered guest
Posted on Thursday, June 23, 2005 - 02:19 am:   

hellopic