Generation UMTS

19th November, 2003

Europe : The GSM Association (GSMA), the global trade association for GSM mobile operators, confirmed today that more than 100 GSM network operators – the vast majority of those currently deploying Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) - have already implemented agreements to accelerate MMS evolution. By committing to follow the same MMS standards specification and implementation paths these operators will ensure international roaming and interworking between networks to allow the transfer of messages on a national and international scale.

At the same time, the GSMA has announced a programme of collaboration with the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), which will work to further extend the capabilities of Multimedia Messaging through enhanced standards development. The OMA, an industry organization committed to delivering open standards for interoperable mobile services across the world, has just announced the new OMA MMS version 1.2 enabler specification (3GPP Release 5). The GSMA is driving this into the market so that consumers can enjoy these new MMS capabilities as quickly as possible.

The GSMA collaborated with key operators and vendors (including Alcatel, Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, Siemens, Sony Ericsson), to facilitate the agreement by all OMA members to the new OMA enhanced MMS standard, which is based on a fully specified multimedia messaging core content domain with interoperable message classes for image and video messaging. Critically, version 1.2 defines a set of message classes without options - therefore promoting interoperability from the outset.

Ongoing cooperation between the Association and the OMA will further enhance MMS capabilities by introducing video messaging capabilities and enhancing image messaging. The collaboration is underpinned by the commitments of operators and vendors to implement new standards, and the additional commitments of operators to drive interworking agreements.

Announcing the achievements, Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association said: "We have made significant advances in the last six months. From a position where compatibility and interworking on MMS both amongst networks and handsets were issues of concern, we have created all prerequisites for interworking and an improved standard that will make interoperability a reality for more handsets and more networks”.

Jari Alvinen, Chairman of the Board of the Open Mobile Alliance: “OMA’s charter outlines our commitment to delivering responsive and high-quality open standards and specifications based upon market and customer requirements, and acting as the catalyst for the consolidation of standards fora. Our successful collaboration with the GSMA on MMS specifications is a good example of the practical application of this. We believe that by uniting our MMS expertise we can bring benefits to the entire mobile value chain on a rapid basis, with solutions developed by the market, for the market. Most importantly, this activity paves the way for further co-operation.”

Current handsets already conform to the first OMA agreed MMS standard (v 1.1). That specification has already enabled simple image transfer with much improved compatibility amongst different vendors’ handsets. Now, working together, the vendors and operators have been able to enhance the standard to enable compatibility for image messaging fully and to include an enhanced image messaging and basic and rich video messaging.

Meanwhile, the GSMA's MMS task force enabled a framework for MMS interchange to guarantee service delivery on common grounds. More than 100 operators have committed themselves to implement this framework by signing the MMS MoU (Memorandum of Understanding).

Conway said the GSMA has “gone back to basics” by creating the MoU through which operators have pledged to implement the latest release MMS standards in both networks and terminals. In addition operators agreed to expand significantly on the number of MMS interworking and international roaming partnerships.