Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)

Camera phone service is based on the Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). MMS is a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Forum Standard that lets users of MMS supportive mobile phones send and receive messages with text, pictures, and sounds.

The MMS application uses General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) as a bearer and a WAP 1.2.1 or later browser to handle the service at the terminal side. The service enables the following primary functionalities:

• Send/receive multimedia messages to/from MMS capable devices (mobile to mobile)
• Send/receive MMS messages to/from e-mail clients (mobile to/from e-mail)

Users must use an MMS capable device and be provisioned within the Multimedia Messaging System Center (MMSC) to send/originate MMS messages. Users become self provisioned when an MMS message is originated and sent from the user's terminal. By sending an MMS message, T-Mobile auto-provisions users for both mobile originating and mobile terminating MMS messages.

• For more information on T-Mobile camera phones, go to Picture & Video Messaging.

Mobile-to-mobile ›
Mobile-to-e-mail or e-mail-to-mobile ›
File transcoding ›
Legacy ›

Mobile-to-mobile:

Send/receive multimedia messages from/to MMS capable devices (mobile to mobile)

1. The WAP Gateway (WAP GW) is the entry point of client devices to the operator-messaging environment. The WAP Gateway accepts the MMS sent by user A. Then, the WAP Gateway provider sends the MMS message to the MMSC for temporary storage.
2. Before accepting the MMS, a check of the submitter is done for the request. User A is checked against the internal database to determine if the MMS service has been provisioned for him. If the request is accepted, the message is downloaded from the terminal.
3. A notification message is constructed. The MMSC requests the WAP Push Proxy Gateway (WAP PPG) to send the notification. The PPG then requests the SMSC to send the notification, which goes via SMS to user B. The SMS is transparent to the user; the user will not see an SMS. The notification SMS (a binary SMS) informs the MMS client in the phone that a message is waiting to be fetched. The MMS client then asks the WAP client to fetch the respective message from the MMSC.
4. When user B sends a request to retrieve the MMS, the user's terminal attempts to fetch the message. The output of either the original message (in the case of no media conversion) or the converted message is then downloaded to the terminal of user B via the WAP GW. The message should be deleted from the queue only if the download is successful. If a delivery report was requested, and the user of the terminal complies, a delivery report is generated and delivered to the originator. The same example follows for a read/reply request.

Mobile-to-e-mail or e-mail-to-mobile:

Send/receive MMS messages to/from e-mail clients (mobile to/from e-mail). In the case of MMS-to-e-mail, the MMSC will deliver the MMS message to the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) relay for sending through the Internet.

The MMS users can also be addressed from the Internet via e-mail. Any MMS user in VoiceStream® will be addressed as MSISDN@tmomail.net. The SMTP relay will receive the e-mail and forward it to the MMSC for delivery. The delivery takes place in the same manner as for mobile-to-mobile, starting with the notification.

File transcoding

The MMS-to-e-mail adaptation will provide the following:

When an MMS message contains text (in a single slide or part of multiple slides), the text will be sent as part of the e-mail body, and the sound and picture elements will be sent as attachments.

The e-mail-to-MMS adaptation will provide the following:

NOTE: All images will be resized to match the recipient’s phone’s capabilities. If the capabilities are not known (such as phones not sold by T-Mobile USA) images will be resized to160x120 pixels if they are larger.

Legacy

The MMS will enable legacy device support using the T-Mobile text messaging service. The T-Mobile text messaging service and MMS share the tmomail.net e-mail domain. This means that an MMS capable customer addressed as MSISDN@tmomail.net receives an e-mail in the form of an MMS message, if the message contains media of type image or sound or text longer than 160 characters. A text e-mail that is shorter than 160 characters will still be delivered to the MMS customers as a T-Mobile text messaging message. A legacy customer will still be able to receive and send e-mail as before from the T-Mobile text messaging service. An existent alias a customer may have will work even if the customer starts using MMS. This means that if user A was using alias@tmomail.net and now has an MMS device, he will be able to receive e-mails in the form of MMS messages addressed as alias@tmomail.net. Similarly, when originating an MMS message for an e-mail address, its address will be alias@tmomail.net.

If an MMS customer sends an MMS message to a user that is legacy, the MMSC will forward the message to the T-Mobile text messaging platform for delivery. The MMSC will send another MMS message to the originator stating that the destination does not have an MMS capable phone and that the message was delivered as SMS.

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