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White Paper
Z500a
13 June 2004
expression in communication messaging. Rather than
sending a downloaded birthday jingle in EMS, a user
can, for example, send a clip of his or her own personal
rendition of “Happy Birthday”.
Pictures and themes
By using the integrated camera, users can take a picture
and immediately send it to a recipient. The ability to send
pictures is one of the most exciting attributes of MMS, as
it allows users to share meaningful moments with
friends, family and colleagues.
Mobile picture transmission also offers inestimable
utility in business applications, from sending on-site
pictures of a construction project to capturing and storing
an interesting design concept for later review. Editing a
picture by adding text allows users to create their own
electronic postcards, an application that is expected to
substantially cut into the traditional postcard market.
Themes (downloaded or pre-defined) can be exchanged
via MMS.
PIM communication with MMS
By using MMS, it is easy to handle PIM (Personal
Information Manager) information. The user can send
and receive business cards (vCard), calendar entries such
as appointments (vCal) and notes (vNotes).
Streaming content in MMS
Streaming makes it possible to view files as they are
being downloaded to the phone. The MPEG-4 file format
can be used for continuous media along the entire
delivery chain envisaged by the MMS, independent of
whether the final delivery is done by streaming or
download, thus enhancing interoperability.
In particular, the following stages are considered:
• Upload from the originating terminal to the MMS
proxy.
• File exchange between MMS servers.
• Transfer of the media content to the receiving termi-
nal, either by file download or by streaming. In the
first case, the self-contained file is transferred,
whereas in the second case the content is extracted
from the file and streamed according to open payload
formats. In this case, no trace of the file format
remains in the content that is transmitted over the
wire or over the air.
Additionally, the MPEG-4 file format can be used for
storage in servers and the “hint track” mechanism can be
used to prepare for streaming.
Benefits with MMS
By allowing the mobile phone to serve as an 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.
As MMS uses WAP as its bearer technology and is being
standardized, it has wide industry support and offers full
interoperability. This is a major benefit to service
providers and end users. Gradual steps in messaging
evolution and the continuity of user experience has
resulted in an ease-of-use where interoperability is
assured.
The MMS server, through which MMS messages are
sent, supports flexible addressing (to both normal phone
numbers (MSISDN) and email accounts), which makes
the 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 that of 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 does not have to call the server to get the message
downloaded to the mobile. Unlike SMS, the MMS
standard uses WAP as its bearer protocol. MMS will take
advantage of the high speed data transport technology
EDGE/GPRS and support a variety of image, video and
audio formats to facilitate a complete communications
experience.
Architecture
The MMS Center (MMS-C) is comprised of the MMS
Server, the MMS Proxy-Relay and the MMS Store. The
MMS Center 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-email, and
supporting flexible addressing. The center’s MMS
Proxy-Relay interacts with the application being run on
the MMS-enabled terminal to provide various messaging
services. WAP is used as the 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.