UK Operators Announce MMS Interconnect, Pricing Plans
Just as I was posting a story about how mobile operators won’t get the revenues they expect from MMS, a few of them have finally agreed to get rid of one of the largest hurdles preventing MMS adoption in the UK. MmO2, Orange and T-Mobile will now let MMS messages travel from any of their networks to any of the other ones, letting people use MMS with friends, family and colleagues, even if they’re not on the same network. The fact that it took this long to agree on interoperability is ridiculous, and shows just how little the wireless carriers have learned over time. The article also mentions that some carriers are dropping their MMS pricing plans, hoping to attract people to test it out (they even have “one month free” plans). Of course, the plans still focus on charging “per byte”, which is terrible for something like MMS. You’re basically encouraging people not to use the best features of MMS – the ability to send images. People don’t want to think about how large the image they’re about to send is – and how much that will cost them. They just want to send their pictures.
