Get The Picture? MMS Will Do It Soon by Vandana Gombar
The Financial Express, August 12, 2002

New Delhi: Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is likely to make its debut in India in the next few weeks. The service allows mobile subscribers to send and receive images, in addition to text.

In what is believed to be the first MMS deal, Nokia has been contracted by a service provider to supply what is called an MMS Centre (MMSC), a must-have for offering MMS.

"We have got our first MMSC customer in India. However, I cannot name the service provider," the director, India strategy of Nokia Networks, Sanjay Bhasin, told eFE. The networks division is an independent unit under Nokia India.

In addition to installation of an MMSC, the service provider needs to have a mobile network which offers General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), or always-on Internet to offer MMS. The customers, at their end, would require MMS/GPRS enabled handsets.

The handsets have started making their appearance in the Indian market. At the service providers end, many networks are GPRS ready. The leading operators in Delhi, the largest market with 1.3 million subscribers, said that they are evaluating the option of offering MMS.

"It is a service which will be limited to the niche market, given the high cost of handsets (about Rs 30,000)," head of Bharti in Delhi, Sarvjit Singh Dhillon, told eFE. Bharti Cellular is the largest cellular service provider in the city state with about half a million subscribers.

Since the initial MMS-enabled handset population will be small, traffic is likely to be larger between the personal computers (PCs) and laptops to these handsets. "Globally, origination of MMS is expected to be primarily from PCs, whether it is emotions or tailored images," the chief executive officer of ACL Wireless Limited, Sanjay K Goyal, said.

ACL's wireless instant messaging (WIM) solution marries the cellular messaging network to the Internet-based instant messaging network. "WIM will ensure that even those without an MMS enabled handset would be alerted, though a short text message, about an image received on the IM," he said.