HELSINKI, Finland—Carriers and vendors across the world continue to refine and define their strategies for offering multimedia messaging services, which many in the industry hope will open the way for significant wireless data revenues.
News on the front continues to come in massive waves, with Nokia Corp. announcing two major MMS infrastructure contracts. The wireless giant said Telefonica Moviles will use its MMS infrastructure products across Telefonica’s entire group network and will launch commercial services in Spain and Germany in the second half of the year. Telecom Italia Mobile will also use Nokia products to launch MMS services in Italy.
Nokia’s MMS products allow users to send text messages along with pictures, graphics and sounds.
As carriers look to roll out MMS services, they’re also working to discover the best way to charge for the services.
Austrian carrier Telekom Austria said it will sell MMS services starting this month, and the service will be free until September. On the other hand, Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile plans to charge customers about $29 a month to send MMS messages when it launches the service in the United Kingdom this month, according to the Financial Times.
But hopes abound for the revenue potentials for multimedia messaging. According to Reuters, MMS infrastructure provider Ericsson expects MMS services to overtake the massively popular short messaging service by 2005.
