Picture Messaging Interoperability

Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless have just announced interoperability for their picture messaging services, technically known as Multimedia Messaging Services. Now a Cingular subscriber will be able to take a picture with their camera phone and send it to a Verizon subscriber, and visa versa. This is certainly an important step in making this type of service more popular. The industry has had high expectations that multimedia messaging would become as popular as text messaging, and would drive traffic on new data networks. So far, however, MMS has not taken off quite as quickly as hoped. This may be because sending text messages allows flexible communication between people, whereas there are only so many pictures you can send your friends and relatives. Still, I???m confident that over time people and developers will find innovative ways of taking advantage of multimedia messaging.