The Truth About AT&T, MMS & The iPhone

AT&TOk, I can’t take it anymore. I’ve got to rant on this whole early MMS coverage by all the media out there. AT&T is not officially releasing MMS early. I’ll try to explain it all.

AT&T blocked MMS on the iPhone when firmware 3.0 was available from Apple. Firmware 3.0 has always supported MMS, that’s why when we had the 3.0 Beta we have screenshots showing how MMS worked, but the messages would never go through because AT&T had it blocked by entering an “opt-out” code. Not to mention many other carriers through out the world started supporting MMS when 3.0 was released when AT&T did not.

AT&T has recently announced that they would finally be releasing MMS to the iPhone on Sept 25th, 2009. How will they do this? First, AT&T needs to remove all the opt-out codes they added to accounts to block MMS when 3.0 was released. This is rumored to be part of the reason of the delay in MMS, but it’s also because the iPhone is a heavy bandwidth device and AT&T needed time to upgrade it’s network to handle the addition of MMS. Next Apple will push a carrier update from AT&T to iTunes. This is not a normal firmware update. Once you update, you will see the little camera in your text messaging and will be able to send pictures along with video, contacts and map locations.

Now the question is, how are people getting this early? Simple, they are getting the code early, running iTunes is a mode designed more for Apple engineers than the average user, and uploading it to their iPhone. But, that’s not all that it takes. AT&T still has to remove the opt-out code on your account. That’s why some people can run the hack and still not have MMS. There is nothing you can do but wait for AT&T to get to your account and remove the code. If you want to know how to get the code early and update your iPhone’s carrier file, check out this article I recently wrote about it. [Read more…]

Friday Night Movie Night: AT&T Tries To Explain Why MMS Took So Long

AT&TOk, I have A LOT to say about all of this, so here goes. First, I’ve officially created a #fail category for our website. AT&T seems to continue to fail so much that I thought we needed the category to keep track of it all. Next, I really need to rant about the AT&T “blogging” guy. It’s really sad that they give him any kind of “tech” title. He’s is the epitome of what tech guys do not want to be. I really think that whoever hired him thought that he was such a “nerd” that he would relate to all the iPhone “techie” people.

I mean seriously, if you had some real tech guy like, Kevin Rose, or someone “normal” sit down and say, “Look, we’re sorry that we’re so far behind. The iPhone really just uses way more bandwidth than other devices and it caught us off guard. We’re working really hard to get it right, and when we do, we’re gonna get you tethering too. And since we’re slacking, we’re gonna give you the first 6 months of tethering for free. And we’re sorry we said end of summer. We missed it by a few days, our bad…”, we’d all probably be kewl with AT&T. That all said, we’d actually be kewl with them if they actually had MMS back when the iPhone first launched. As you all already know, most free phones even come with MMS. I’m on my 3rd iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, for sure the more advanced phone EVER and I can’t text someone a picture.

And tethering! My crappy old black and white screened Palm used to tether to my laptop via serial cable 8 years ago! Since I’m on a very long rant, may I add that I have no 3G in my area but I still pay the upgraded $30 data fee. It used to be $20 with the 1st Gen iPhone. An AT&T rep told me the increased fee was because of GPS. FYI: GPS is ran by the US Military. It’s free. That’s why you can buy a TomTom and have no monthly fees. To those saying it’s because of AGPS (assisted by cell towers), baloney! Also the network is now so bad in my area that I guarantee it’s worse than dial-up and I pretty much can’t use it. Thankfully I have wireless most places.

Ok, I think I’m done… So now for the video that got me going on all of this: [Read more…]