AT&T gives time frame for Friday's iPhone MMS launch

It's already known that AT&T is activating MMS for the iPhone on Friday, but the company has now narrowed the time frame to within a few hours.

(Credit: Apple)

As reported by AppleInsider, AT&T's official Facebook page said the service will be activated late morning Pacific time Friday. That's not exactly definitive, but at least no one will need to sit around all morning wondering if it's on yet.

The iPhone's multimedia messaging service will allow the transmission of photos, contacts, audio files, and locations with the Messages app, according to Apple.

In order to get the service, you will need to download a "new carrier settings update enabling MMS," according to AT&T. The update will be available through iTunes, the company said.

It seems odd that an update is needed when some users have been reporting for the last 10 days that MMS has been activated on their iPhones.

Despite AT&T bringing one of the most requested services to the iPhone, comments on AT&T's Facebook page could be described as sarcastic at best.

"Welcome to 2003 AT&T!" one comment read.

"I hope it crashes badly....this will make them spend all that money they charged us for something that we could not even use for months!" wrote another.

While some people scorned AT&T's delay in delivering MMS, others echoed the recent sentiments of CNET News' Elinor Mills and suggested the company improve its network.

"I rarely use the network at all. I pay...every month for a handheld mac. I only get enough service at my home to text, we don't have 3G anyway so I use my own wi fi...I am paying twice for the Internet. I could care less about MMS because I'd rather get signal and make calls (than) send picture messages," one person commented on AT&T's Facebook page.

[dylerl]

On that comment at the end of the article, why would someone pay so much for a service they cannot even use? If they only use their wifi maybe they should get a touch and save a whole lot in monthly services, these people don't make any sense to me. My Iphone works wherever I am and I do not have any of these issues other people keep talking about. I still think if Verizon had the Iphone their network would cease to exist on the load that is happening on AT&#38;T right now. <br /><br />Also CNET why are you so bent on bashing AT&#38;T, I have only seen one positive article on AT&#38;T on cnet since the Iphone came out and countless bashing them plus CNET TV. It seems you are getting money from Verizon and other companies to bad mouth AT&#38;T when you should be championing them they had the guts to take on the Iphone when no other provider did, they took the chance and I think they are doing an impressive job when you think about the 16 million Iphones they now have on their network always downloading massive amounts of data over their network, if this happened on any other network in the country that network would crash and burn pretty quickly. CNET you should be advocating innovation and trying to get more companies to take new chances like AT&#38;T did with the Iphone, sure it has some issues but they are fixing them and I cannot say that about the technical stifling of Verizon, what innovation have they ever brought anyone, they are the luddites in this situation and as a technical news organization who should be advocating the innovators and early adopters not the laggards which you have been doing. Did CBS destroy the once great CNET?

[fortyonejb]

Randall Stephenson is that you?<br /><br />1st, lets get some credence to your little Verizon dig. Verizon is well heralded for having the strongest, widest network. Your Verizon claim is baseless, moving on.<br /><br />2nd. Why are you sticking up for AT&#38;T, they are months behind MMS, charged people for MMS for months, for a service THEY DIDN'T provide. European carriers are not having nearly as much trouble. AT&#38;T's woes do not start and end with the iPhone, their coverage is awful no matter the hardware you use. AT&#38;T will lose their exclusivity deal, you can count on it, they are mismanaging their resources every day.

[dennisheadley]

While I don't think much of AT&#38;T in my area they actually have superior service to Verizon here. I have a Samsung Omnia WM6.1 touch phone on Verizon as my personal phone and an Motorola phone from AT&#38;T for my work phone and know well the differences between the two. He was very correct about Verizon stifling technologies in all of their cellular phones. The AT&#38;T has no features that are locked-out or locked-up, while the Verizon phone which is sold as having GPS you have to pay $9.99 a month extra for the Verizon Navigator application and service or the GPS is disabled and unusable by any other application. The phone is advertised with Visual voice-mail but thats another $9.99 option, on top of the $49.99 they charge you for the smartphone package that enables exchange/outlook support and push e-mail. There is one other extra charge I can't think of at the moment that is also added to that for something that should be part of the contract also. In all my service charges went up over $80.00 a month going from an LG phone with internet data plan (extra), unlimited texting (extra) and MMS (extra). Verizon is one of the worst cellular companies out there for breaking down all the options on the phones and making each "feature" that would make you buy the phone in the first place an extra charge item.

[dylerl]

Ah they are not months behind, they said they would release it in late summer and Friday means three days behind. Also the european carriers have no where near 16 million iphones so that is not a comparison.

[dylerl]

Ah they are not months behind, they said they would release it in late summer and Friday means three days behind. Also the european carriers have no where near 16 million iphones so that is not a comparison. Oh and also the european carriers all get subsidized from their governments therefore have superior networks to anything any providers has in the US, and I am all for that if it gets all our networks up to par with the rest of the world.

[dylerl]

Ah they are not months behind, they said they would release it in late summer and Friday means three days behind. Also the european carriers have no where near 16 million iphones so that is not a comparison. Oh and also the european carriers all get subsidized from their governments therefore have superior networks to anything any providers has in the US, and I am all for that if it gets all our networks up to par with the rest of the world.<br /><br />Also verizon claims this but it is not true, i live in Northern California and the Verizon network is the worst. I had major problems when I was on their network in the east and west coast. Cant say anything about the midwest never lived there and dont travel there, but everywhere else my Iphone has a far superior signal then either of my crappy verizon phones I had. This is a rumor about verizon and if you look at 3G data tests the two fastests networks are Sprint with downloads and ATT with uploads.

[brettotte1]

Visual Voicemail is $2.99, not $9.99. GPS is unlocked on the Omnia with a Samsung update. The unlimited data plan is $29.99, not $49.99.

[Vegaman_Dan]

If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, then there's a pretty good chance it's a duck. <br /> <br />If AT&#38;T is having frequent and serious network issues, dropped calls, and general performance problems, then it's unlikely that any media, including CNET, are likely to talk much about when the system *is* working and will instead focus on the problems that are all too apparent. In short, they report the news.

[semipro1337]

@ dylerl <br /> <br />Your right man, they arent months behind on the MMS thing. I for one agree with you totally on that... because they are YEARS behind on it. <br /> <br />The god-all-mighty Iphone, with amazing interface, touchscreen, and who-gives-a-sh*t what else it has, couldnt do 2 simple things at launch (3 years or more ago) and it finally has overcome one of them...well almost, tomorrow it will overcome the MMS limitation. Wow, YEARS late, not months late like you say. And I dont care that Apple or ATT said it will be available in a few months at the beginning of 2009, that doesnt excuse the fact its been missing for YEARS! <br /> <br />The second is multi-taksing. But I think thats enough of that...

[dylerl]

I agree with you they are years behind, for some reason Apple thought email would be sufficient for most users and obviously it is not. That is Apples fault though not AT&#38;T's. Now that AT&#38;T has 16 million Iphones they cannot just flip the switch and let people all use it at once that would be catastrophic, they needed to take some time do some tests and make sure all will be ok tomorrow, thats why they delayed it. And the multitasking while really only the Pre does that and it drains the battery very quickly, I don't think we have the technology and batteries at this point to do multitasking in phones correctly so I agree with Apple for not doing that yet, we will get there but the PRE is not it, what a pos in my opinion!!

[semipro1337]

Actually, your wrong again. Multitasking has been around since pretty much the first Windows Mobile phones, the blackberries do it, Im doing it right now on my Storm :), and to me multitasking, the ability to do more than one damn thing at a time is truly a smart phone. Iphones can not do this. Dont get me wrong, the Iphone is amazing in a TON of ways, but the most basic of things that should have been engineered AROUND, not added later, are missing still.

[LordNikonX]

LMAO! I'm an Android user and it BLOWS ME that I never knew that iPhones couldn't MMS!!! Are you seriously telling me the #1 phone in the US... still can't MMS??? Apple = Fail.

[dylerl]

How does Apple = fail when they have the #1 phone in the US? You just made the most hypocritical comment I have ever heard outside the republican party and you did it in one sentence, that is pretty impressive.

[katiepea]

the iphone is not the #1 phone in the US, blackberry owns 3 of the top 5 positions, including 1

[Perry_Clease]

"by katiepea September 24, 2009 10:07 AM PDT<br />the iphone is not the #1 phone in the US, blackberry owns 3 of the top 5 positions, including 1"<br /><br />Well you are partly correct. The Blackberry is the #1 phone, the iPhone is the #1 smart phone :)

[michaelt43]

Calm down fanboy dylerl. Also, I don't think there was anything hypocritical about what was said. I think the word you are looking for is contradictory. Get a dictionary. <br /> <br />As for the lack of MMS, I totally agree. I have an iphone 3GS and it's a POS. It's so crippled that it's ridiculous. Why not have MMS? Why not allow tethering? Oh ya, ATT network sucks and Apple is catering to it. That's right. <br /> <br />Again, iphone is not #1. It's #1 in being overhyped.

[tmeesseman]

@dylerl <br /> <br />And yet you not only try to take a cheap shot at the Republican party (which is uncalled for and lame for that matter), but you also don't know what the word hypocritical means. I believe the word you're looking for is "oxymoronic". <br /> <br />So if anything, dyrerl=fail.

[Perry_Clease]

"As for the lack of MMS, I totally agree. I have an iphone 3GS and it's a POS. It's so crippled that it's ridiculous. Why not have MMS? Why not allow tethering? Oh ya, ATT network sucks and Apple is catering to it. That's right. "<br /><br />BS

[mjcarpenter001]

michalet43 - if you think its such a POS, why did you buy it? Obviously you knew full well that there was no MMS, and if you got the 3GS, then you were probably (or hopefully) aware of the other issues facing the hardware, software, and network. I've had a 3G for just about a year, and while there are some things that do aggravate me about it (battery life, AT&#38;T), overall, there is no other phone on the market that does what it does, as well as it does. I'm not a fanboy, or whatever Apple-bashers call those people; I do love my phone though, and think that people need to take a step back and realize that not all people who have iPhones are on them 24/7, facebooking, tweeting, etc... If the claim that millions of people using the network at the same time kills the bandwidth were true, then the millions of business users on the blackberry constantly sending email, checking flights, etc... should be held "responsible" for AT&#38;T's network issues too. Or the kids tweeting and facebooking from their internet enabled phones. Its not all iPhones. End of story.

[ittesi259]

When is everyone gonna learn this isn't an Apple failure....the MMS functionality has been there, its the failure or AT&#38;T for not providing the network to do it. Europe and Asia have been MMSing with their iPhones for a while.

[dylerl]

Ah contradictory can be used here as well but hypocritical means that if someone says one thing and then does/believes another thing that is hypocritical, both can be used in this situation. And why not use every chance to bad mouth the republican party they almost destroyed our country and would have sent us into a depression if they had their way, not the people I want to talk good about!!

[myles taylor]

This is definitely welcome although my main concern is with the network as well. This is more like a "why didn't we have this already" kind of thing and hard to get excited about. <br /><br />I don't have that much trouble with AT&#38;T but the network could definitely be improved. That's the most important thing in my book.

[Goodbye Helicopter]

who cares about mms??<br />*** is email??

[michaelt43]

MMS alows you to send pics and other files to the million and millions of other people that have MMS but do not have email on their phones. MMS is standard on the majority of phones out there and has been for about 5 years.

[tmeesseman]

Seriously, I don't ever intend to use this feature. I never have on any other phone and I don't intend to start just because it's an iPhone. <br /> <br />To me, it's like complaining that your phone doesn't have Snake on it because "phone since the year 2000 have had Snake!" <br /> <br />Which ironically, the iPhone has probably 20 versions of Snake. But anyway...

[Perry_Clease]

It is important for communicating with people who have dumb phones

[tmeesseman]

@michaelt43 <br /> <br />See, people think AT&#38;T and Apple need to get with the year 2003. But I say the phone manufacturers that don't have email need to get with 2009. For God's sake, email is the #1 method of communication these days! Get with it! <br /> <br />MMS is outdated in my opinion... and completely useless.

[cvaldes1831]

Look guys, michaelt43 and Perry_Clease are right.<br /><br />There are many people who have dumbphones that do not handle e-mail nor e-mail attachments gracefully. Apple thought that people would be fine e-mailing photos instead of using archaic MMS, but they were wrong.<br /><br />Whether or not any given individual here thinks that MMS is outdated is irrelevant. It's not about you, it's about the marketplace in its entirety.<br /><br />The fact of the matter is that many people on this planet have cellphones that do not handle e-mailed photos and videos.

[ikramerica--2008]

I used MMS on my Sony phone on ATT.<br /><br />It took over 6 hours for the other party to receive the MMS both times I tried.<br /><br />It is clearly an ATT problem here, not an iPhone problem or Sony problem or whatever. So because of the huge expected surge in MMS by iPhone users going MMS crazy because it will be so EASY to do, ATT wisely, and yes I say wisely, upgraded their network first before enabling it.<br /><br />Now, will it actually be enough of a system upgrade to handle the load? I doubt it. This is ATT we are talking about, after all.

[frstsk8brds]

I am wondering if the new carrier file that Apple is releasing tomorrow (to enable MMS) will disable tethering as well. I update to the 3.1 OS, which update my carrier file to 5.0, and lost tethering. I got a new 3GS with 3.0.1 OS and 4.0 carrier file and enabled the tethering hack with no problem. Anyone know if the new file will kill tethering again?

[abcd9009]

please can you tell me how to get the tethering hack? <br />I don't care about MMS or for that matter even Texting. I Tweet instead of Text and upload to Facebook/Flickr instead of MMS.

[luckymikerocks]

I wonder if "late morning" will be as accurate as "late summer." I won't be expecting that update to appear before noon Pacific time.

[katiepea]

i'm sorry, but please consider my opinion as open-ended, i had an iphone for two years, am loyal to apple, have 4 macs, and even a desktop pc running snow leopard, multiple ipods, apple tv, apple router, but the iphone is a serious ball dropper. It is surrounded by what i can only describe, in my opinion as utter failure, by carrier and by developer, i couldn't handle the nonsense that goes on constantly with the iphone, but so i ended up switching to blackberry, and haven't looked back, no software babysitters over here, and consistent updates to devices

[tmeesseman]

To each his own... but you also don't have near the expansion that the iPhone has.

[atcocoabeach]

@tmeesseman <br />What do you mean by "expansion"? Do you mean that each year they will make you buy new hardware because everyone has that expansion. You can't upgrade the memory, or replace the battery, or even tweak performance without voiding your warranty (among other things). <br /> <br />Isn't it silly how they made the video software only run on the latest hardware? If expansion was so limitless why do something like that? <br /> <br />If you are talking about apps... why not make the switch to Android then. There is an Android phone announced for Verizon, tmobile, and Sprint here in the US so far. Don't quote the extra 20,000 apps the iphone has... we've long passed saturation point. As long as innovation shows up on both we're covered.

[katiepea]

actually i have more, my memory is removable and upgradable, and i can put different operating systems on my phone, and different browsers, and i can use google voice...i actually don't think you could be more wrong

[justinkuester]

Who cares about MMS. Really when you have internet access, email and social networking sites like facebook, do you really need MMS? As far as the connection and such, I have never had a problem. I travel all over and have always had access to all my features. Is it always 3G no but most of the time it is. The apps are great and the support received when there are issues is awesome. Outlook sync is awesome and the value add you get with MobileMe is also awesome. The apps available are great and you can pretty much do most things you need to do, even thing you didnt expect to be able to do.

[Michichael]

My boss just reset his AT&#38;T apn and boom. MMS. :P

[asparra]

How do you get this done?

[Vegaman_Dan]

Something that has been made rather obvious by its absence- <br /> <br />What will this cost? <br /> <br />I somehow doubt AT&#38;T will offer this as included in the iPhone service data plan. Since they charge for this on other phones, then I can easily see that they will want to monetize this service as an extra fee. The problem being that it's unlikely that people will buy it when they can get the same functionality through other services that are on the phone now. <br /> <br />If it's free, then it will be popular. If they charge for it, it may be yet another nail in the coffin of customer satisfaction for AT&#38;T customers. <br /> <br />Disclosure: I'm an AT&#38;T iPhone user myself.

[dylerl]

They already have said it will be included in your text messaging plan, no further charges, if you do not have a text messaging plan then they will charge you per message.

[Nodack]

AT&#38;T works great here in Phoenix. Why is it that everyone that writes an article about the iPhone or AT&#38;T doesn't have any reception in their home?

[cvaldes1831]

Because most American technology writers live in places like NYC and SF which just so happen to be places with horrific AT&#38;T cellular problems.

[ikramerica--2008]

Yep, and the fantastic journalists that they are, they extrapolate that their personal experience MUST be universal.<br /><br />Oh, and for the few entertainment writers who spend a lot of time in hollywood, well, 3G coverage stinks there too. Good most of the rest of LA, but not in Hollywood (and spotty in North Hollywood).

[sbratchie]

I dont know what all the buzz is about. Ok, we had to wait a little longer for mms than originally told, but if you think about it ....its better to have waited for a perfected product than to have had it early and had nothing but problems. ATT needs to be careful when it comes to their service, they dont want to add bad mms to it. Everybody already has negative things to say about them. Personally I love the ATT service. I am coming from Nextel so ATT is a blessing. I live on Long Island and the service is great

[Norseman]

I'm certainly not an AT&#38;T fan. In fact, I'm plenty pissed at them at the moment because of the lousy signal at my home (no 3G, quite often "No signal", etc.) But to be fair: is it totally realistic to expect a carrier--any carrier--to have 100% solid coverage? Yes, a lot of people live where that's the case. They're the lucky ones. But some factors like terrain, tree density, etc., affect the coverage and make it tough to get a good signal unless the tower is in your back yard. And how about in a basement (which they have in my part of the country)?<br /><br />Recently, I've been looking at the MicroCell femtocell that AT&#38;T has come out with. While I'm not crazy about the idea of paying to fix THEIR problem, I've almost talked myself into getting one--if the one-time charge for the hardware isn't exorbitant (say approx. $100).<br /><br />I'm sure that if a satisfaction poll were taken of ANY carrier, you could come up with horror stories about their coverage. Don't think AT&#38;T is the Lone Ranger!

[dinkeldorf]

For a different perspective, up here in Canada, I've had tethering and MMS on my iPhone 3gs for a while. I couldn't give a rats arse about MMS but tethering rocks. Rogers here does a lot of things wrong but got that right. So this is a fuss over nothing.

[dinkeldorf]

And further, who pays for texting? Google voice is your friend.

[Dlajuett]

Frankly, I am not really that interested in MMS. I would however like to know, what has happened to tethering for the iPHone??? ATT said this would arrive "by the end of the summer." As expected that has come, and gone, and no word on tethering. Typical. Well I doubt I'd use it anyway since they are bound to charge some huge extra fee for the service, the greedy, dishonest bums. I think Michael Moore should consider doing a movie just to blast ATT and the whole iPhone monopoly setup.....

[sableo]

Why is this website always bashing the Iphone?

[cvaldes1831]

The writers on this site generally like the iPhone.<br /><br />The problem is AT&#38;T's service.

[Braderunner]

It took Apple all these years to bring MMS to the iPhone, not AT&#38;T. AT&#38;T has had MMS for years. Apple just added the feature to the iPhone in mid June. Yes, AT&#38;T is taking a few months to get ready for iPhone users, but so what. It's a fact that iPhone users send more data across their network than those with any other phone (including smart phones). It's also a fact that even though MMS itself is nothing new, and we all know what it does, iPhone users will be sending MMS after MMS on Friday just for the novelty of it. So it is going to be a busy day at AT&#38;T. Let's face it, ALL of those messages can't reach their destinations. Would they on any network? I doubt it, and we'll never know, anyway. But after all the dust settles, I'm sure it will be MMS as usual. There are a lot of basic features that the iPhone has lacked until recently (and still does) because of Apple, not AT&#38;T. Apple just added video to the new 3Gs, and it's about time. I'm sure they could have added it to all iPhones with a software update, but they needed a few things to separate the 3Gs from the 3G. Still no camera zoom, another basic feature. But the bottom line is, the iPhone is still the best and it's getting better all the time. I have had my 3G for just over a year and I like it more now than I did when I first got it. I've never been able to say that about another phone.

[DragonReign713]

*explodes*

[crue24]

I had Verizon for years and they had excellent service coverage. However I left them years ago, way before the iPhone because of their faults. They were way late in picking up the latest and greatest technology phones. I left for a TI85 or something....I can't remember, but it had bluetooth and all these things no Verizon phone had. I've had my AT&#38;T frustrations and even considered going back (prior to iPhone) because of the better coverage but changed my mind for the very reason many other posters have mentioned. Verizon cripples the phones which I find outrageous. My Verizon friends now have Bluetooth phones, but I can't simply send them pic or file via BT (no i can't do that with the iPhone either, but I have two ATT phones) because Verizon doesn't allow that function. Verizon cripples lots of inherent technology on the phone and then offers some it as a service if you pay for it. That is ridiculous. I will readily admit that the network is better than ATT, but at least the service in my area is pretty good so I would certainly never go back. And my main reason for not going back is Verizons policies. They seem to think that regardless of how the technology works, it shouldn't be available unless Verizon gets paid for it. I haven't done a monthly pricing plan comparison plan in a while, but even if ATT were more expensive, I would still say it was worth it because I know I'm not going to get charged for a feature that is built into the phone and doesn't require the network. Verizon seems to me to want to charge for every feature whether it requires network usage or not, (an example being BT file transfer. there is NO network/provider reason to turn that off except to force users to use MMS where they have to pay for it.) If I buy a fancy phone, I want all the features it provides without unreasonable additional costs.

[crue24]

One more thing to my point, for all you iPhone/ATT bashers, while I thought it sucked that I didn't have MMS, mostly because every non-iPhone user had a crappy e-mail client on their phone that they rarely ever used, at least I was forced to use a FREE service rather than Verizon's policy of crippling functionality to force you to use a paid service. Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily like AT&#38;T, the prices should be cheaper, the service should be better, but at least they don't cripple my phones built in functionality to force me to pay for a service to do the same thing. And while I love my iPhone, I've had this opinion long before it came out. Verizon was slow to come out with the advanced phones which is why I left, but when they finally started introducing them, I was simply amazed at how much they crippled them. Excellent coverage, lousy business practices.

[grtgrfx]

Sure AT&#38;T cripples phones. My 2008 Sony-Ericsson Z750 has GPS, 2-way communication and tethering built-in, and the European carriers allow these features, but AT&#38;T installed their own firmware that crippled these and other uses, going so far as to remap the basic function keys of the phone to push their internet portal. So don't tell me that AT&#38;T is any better at delivering unadulterated features than Verizon, 'cause they're not.

[McPlot]

While I think the iPhone is OK, and I do think it is overhyped. Apple does a great job of making people think their products are flawless and the best ever, when they are not. <br /> <br />That aside, it was never the iPhone that could not MMS. It was AT&#38;T not allowing the iPhone to MMS. I USED to have AT&#38;T. I left it for many reasons. I even got out of my contract because of those reasons. Rather you think the iPhone is worth it or not, it has the "Cool" factor going so people are buying it. If it was offered another network, AT&#38;T would lose a lot of customers as those customers only went with AT&#38;T to get the "Cool" factor of the iPhone.