Benefits, Architecture, MMS technical features

White Paper T610/612

Benefits

Essentially enabling the mobile terminal to serve as image processor and conveyor, Multimedia Messaging accommodates the exchange of important visual information as readily as it facilitates fun. Business and leisure usage of MMS will be dynamically merged, resulting in enhanced personal efficiency for users and increased network activity for operators. In short, MMS affords total usage for total communication

Because MMS uses WAP as its bearer technology and is being standardized by 3GPP, it has wide industry support and offers full interoperability, which is a major benefit to service providers and end users. Ease-of-use resulting from both the gradual steps of the messaging evolution and the continuity of user experience gained from interoperability is assured.

The MMS server, through which MMS messages are sent, supports flexible addressing (to both normal phone numbers (MSISDN) and e-mail accounts), which makes user interface more friendly and allows greater control for operators. The MMS server, moreover, is responsible for the instant delivery feature of MMS.

MMS technical features

The MMS standard, just like SMS, offers store-and- forward transmission (instant delivery) of messages, rather than a mailbox-type model. MMS is a person-to- person communications solution, meaning that the user gets the message directly into the mobile phone. He or she doesn’t have to call the server to get the message downloaded to the mobile phone. Unlike SMS, the MMS standard uses WAP as its bearer protocol. MMS will take advantage of the high speed data transport technologies EDGE and GPRS and support a variety of image, video and audio formats to facilitate a complete communication experience.

Architecture

The MMS Centre (MMS-C) is comprised of the MMS Server, the MMS Proxy-Relay and the MMS Store. The MMS Centre is the central element of the MMS network architecture, providing storage and operational support, enabling instant delivery of multimedia messages from terminal-to-terminal and terminal-to-e-mail, and support- ing flexible addressing. The centre’s MMS Proxy-Relay interacts with the application being run on the MMS-ena- bled terminal to provide various messaging services. WAP is used as bearer of an MMS message between the MMS-C and the MMS client (application). The WAP Gateway is used for delivery and retrieval of messages.