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MMS technical features
The MMS standard, just like SMS, offers store-and-
forward transmission (instant delivery) of mes-
sages, rather than a mailbox-type model. MMS is a
person-to-person communications solution, mean-
ing that the user gets the message directly into the
mobile. Unlike SMS, the MMS standard uses WAP
as its bearer protocol. MMS will take advantage of
the high speed data transport technologies such as
GPRS and support a variety of image, video and
audio formats to facilitate a complete communica-
tion 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
Figure 4. The architecture of MMS
Message conversion
The MMS-C is able to perform limited message
conversion - for example, from MMS to SMS - so
that processing and air time is not wasted in send-
ing messages to mobile terminals that do not have
adequate capability to receive them. It also handles
service aspects such as store and forward, guaran-
teed delivery, subscriber preferences, operator
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 inter-
acts with the application being run on the MMS-
enabled terminal to provide various messaging
services. WAP is used as bearer of an MMS mes-
sage between the MMS-C and the MMS client
(application). The WAP Gateway is used for delivery
and retrieval of messages.
constraints, and billing information. The MMS-C
also vouches for high quality messaging, e.g. by
format conversion. This means that the MMS-C
recognizes which formats are supported in the
mobile phone, and adapts the MMS messages to
these formats.
15
White Paper
T290i/T290c
October 2004
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