Multimedia Messaging Service

MMS was originally developed within the Third-Generation Partnership Program (3GPP), a standards organization focused on standards for the UMTS/GSM networks.

Since then, MMS has been deployed world-wide and across both GSM/GPRS and CDMA networks.

MMS has also been standardized within the Third-Generation Partnership Program 2 (3GPP2), a standards organization focused on specifications for CDMA2000 networks.

As with most 3GPP standards, the MMS standards have three stages:

* Stage 1 - Requirements (3GPP TS 22.140) * Stage 2 - System Functions (3GPP TS 23.140) * Stage 3 - Technical Realizations

Both 3GPP and 3GPP2 have delegated the development of the Stage 3 Technical Realizations to the OMA, a standards organization focused on specifications for the mobile wireless networks.

MMS-enabled mobile phones enable subscribers to compose and send messages with one or more multimedia parts. Multimedia parts may include text, images, audio and video. These content types should conform to the MMS Standards. For example your phone can send an MPEG-4 video in AVI format, but the other party who is receiving the MMS may not be able to interpret it. To avoid this, all mobiles should follow the standards defined by OMA. Mobile phones with built-in or attached cameras, or with built-in MP3 players are very likely to also have an MMS messaging client—a software program that interacts with the mobile subscriber to compose, address, send, receive, and view MMS messages.