One of the most demanded service in the telecom sector has now at last reached the iPhone, which means that the iPhone is now capable of sending and receiving MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). This allows the iPhone now to exchange different media such as photos, videos, etc. with another iPhone. This was made possible when AT&T released and firmware upgrade of the iPhone on 25th September.
The MMS feature can be activated on your iPhone by updating your iPhone via iTunes. This feature is available in the latest update of the iPhone. To confirm that your device is ready to send or receive a MMS, go to Settings> General> About and your carrier version listed their should be AT&T 5.5 and the latest iPhone 3.0 software update will also be needed. The bad news is that people having the original iPhone will not be able to use this feature. The MMS facility is only available in the U.S. right now. People have welcomed this update as it was long overdue. Earlier in June AT&T had said that they would not be making the MMS facility available in the U.S. because they were not sure whether their servers could handle the pressure of millions on U.S. citizens sending and receiving MMS at a large scale.
Some users were confused because of the iPhone 3.1 and iPhone MMS Update. Reports say that the MMS service worked fine, however the MMS service was not working for many users because they had not rebooted their iPhone. As the iPhone had not been rebooted, the MMS button was missing and this lead to users being confused. For the MMS facility to work on you iPhone, you have to connect your iPhone to your computer and click “Check for Update” button in iTunes. Once the update is completed, you have to restart your iPhone by switching it off and then switching it on again. The thing which has to be kept in consideration is that OS of your iPhone should be 3.1 and so you may be required to update your software first. Unconfirmed reports state that AT&T might not be able to handle the load of this facility. The disappointing fact in this is that these updates are only for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The older version of the iPhone has been left out which will probably make many sad.
Since AT&T has launched the MMS facility on iPhone, it has seen a record increase of 40% in data traffic. People at AT&T are nervous that will their servers be able to cope with ever increasing amounts of data traffic. The original iPhone users can still view the MMS they receive via the View my message website.