MMS Interoperability Coming to Canada

Canada's wireless service providers will introduce inter-carrier multimedia message services (MMS) to wireless phone customers across the country from this Friday. Until now, sharing of MMS messages was limited to customers using the same wireless provider. Until now, a customer on a different network would see a Web link on their mobile phone through which they could then view the message from a PC.

The overall solution for sharing multimedia messages across the Canadian carriers was made possible through the use of a comprehensive MMS interoperability platform by VeriSign.

"Multimedia messaging represents the next wave of growth in the burgeoning wireless communications sector," states Lawrence Surtees, Director of Telecommunications and Internet Research at IDC Canada Ltd. of Toronto. "Wireless is currently the fastest-growing segment of the communications space and is expected to be the largest market this year. The intercarrier agreement enabling all Canadian wireless users to share MMS pictures and video clips is expected to stimulate rapid growth of this exciting phenomenon that heralds true mobile convergence."

"July 1 also marks 20 years to the day when Canada's first cellular networks were switched on in 1985," said CWTA President & CEO Peter Barnes. "In just two short decades, Canadians have truly become enamored of all things wireless, and the addition of inter-carrier MMS is just one more example that highlights the scope of wireless services in Canada."

Canada's wireless carriers offer network coverage to more than 95 per cent of the Canadian population, and there are now more than 15 million wireless phone subscribers across the country. Text messaging volumes reached 115 million, or more than 3.7 million per day, for the month of March 2005.

The operators complying with the interoperability agreement are Aliant Mobility, Bell Mobility, Fido, MTS, NorthernTel Mobility, Rogers Wireless, SaskTel Mobility, T

Posted to the site on 30th June 2005