Oh, Sure, Now Cingular And AT&T Wireless Think MMS Interconnect Makes Sense

It should be obvious to just about anyone that for messaging systems to work there needs to be interconnect between providers. The concept of "network effects" isn't something that people came up with last month or anything... However, the wireless industry still seems quite slow in understanding the importance it represents -- even after incredibly slow adoption in the US was blamed on the inability of carriers to allow SMS messages to cross carrier borders. While MMS clearly has it's problems, interconnect among carriers is an issue that should have been taken care of ages ago. Yet, here we are, and the big news of the day is the absolutely pointless announcement that Cingular and AT&T Wireless will interconnect on MMS. Yes, that's right, the two companies had to wait until their merger was almost complete to realize that they should make their MMS messages work across networks. Let's try this one more time: subscribers don't know, don't want to know and don't care about who their friends get phone service from. They don't want to check that their friends have the same carrier in order to send them a message -- and because it doesn't work across carriers they don't use it -- or they try and it just doesn't work. This is doing much more harm than good, and is holding back the technology. It isn't news that Cingular and AT&T Wireless are allowing MMS interconnect. It's news that this should be news at all.

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