WIRELESS OPERATORS PURSUE MMS INTEROP

Multimedia messaging service interoperability is starting to eke its way into carrier networks. Cingular Wireless, U.S. Cellular and, just last week, Leap Wireless have all signed interoperability agreements with Verizon Wireless and hooked into Mobile 365's MMS intercarrier hub. Though the carriers have been relatively quiet about the deals, they all seem to have an eye on the same goal: recreating the messaging bonanza that occurred when SMS interoperability became ubiquitous.

“We've already seen a big lift in MMS usage since we signed our first interoperability deal [with Cingular],” said Jeff Straight, Verizon Wireless' vice president for multimedia and data services. “Interoperability is the way to get natural growth in MMS. Without interoperability you're simply blocking that natural growth.”

When SMS interoperability arrived in late 2001, the SMS traffic surge owed mainly to customers' ability to send messages between networks. Inter-carrier SMS jumped from 6 million messages a quarter to 50 million in between the last quarter of 2001 and the first quarter of 2002. Now, intercarrier SMS traffic hovers at nearly 4 billion messages a quarter, and interop traffic accounts for 45% of all SMS traffic, according to Mobile 365, which handles roughly 80% of all intercarrier SMS.

Straight said that while Verizon Wireless doesn't expect those numbers for SMS, it does expect MMS to have a significant overall impact. Though the typical SMS message is only 100 characters, a typical MMS message can be 100 KB to 200 KB, driving up data usage on the network. Revenues per MMS are higher as well as overall margins on the service. And while SMS is a fairly commoditized service, MMS has much richer features carriers can use to differentiate service offerings.

“This is going to be a key driver of data services, especially photography,” Straight said.

While carriers are signing individual interoperability deals, they are connecting through Mobile 365's (formerly InphoMatch) MMS hub, which links the different protocols of carriers' various MMS on one platform and performs basic transcoding duties. While so far Cingular, U.S. Cellular and Leap — which runs Cricket Wireless — have only signed interoperability deals with Verizon, they are all connected directly to the hub and can all take MMS traffic from each other. They just have to choose to accept it, said William Dudley, Mobile 365's senior director of product management. However, he expects carriers to sign those deals soon and the remaining Tier 1 operators to join them on the hub.

“We're still in the early days, but our goal is to soon have a ubiquitous interoperable network, in which customers don't have to worry about [who has what provider],” Dudley said.

Mobile 365's MMS hub has actually been ready for well over a year, but carriers have been cautious about signing on immediately, said Jamie Mills, director of strategic accounts for Mobile 365. European interoperability trials didn't yield the best results, Mills said, which may have caused U.S. carriers to wait. Other factors at play were carrier's testing of their own intra-network MMS performance and the penetration of MMS capable phones.