What Is The Cell Phone Multimedia Messaging Feature?

Cell phone multimedia messaging is a relatively new technology based on old concepts that allows increased speed of mobile transmissions on between cellular phones.

These new high-speed transmissions will also be able to incorporate video streams, sound bites, and graphics. Other multimedia functions, such as email capabilities, are also in the works for the new and improved cell phones just around the corner.

Cellular phone multimedia messages are an improved version of popular Short Message Services (SMS) such as text messaging. It has been forecasted by many cell phone analysts that cell phone multimedia messages and services coming out in the near future will cause a sharp increase in the amount of cellular phones bought all over the world, and could even cause a rush in tech markets similar to the one caused by home computers in the early ‘90s.

Cellular phone multimedia messaging services (also known as MMS) makes extensive use of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) as well as other transmission relay formats such as HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data System) in order to attach multimedia functions to messages sent between cell phones and also between cellular phones and desktop computers.

One of the ways companies are looking at this is through applications such as EDGE and UMTS.

EDGE stands for Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution and is capable of both data rates up to 384 Kbps (Kilobytes per second) as well as crystal clear voice transmission quality.

UMTS stands for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System and is considered 3rd generation communications technology capable of breaking through speed barriers with data transfer rates in excess of 2 Mbps (Megabytes per second).

Proponents of UMTS technology also point to the fact that it is capable of streaming multimedia applications such as real time video conferencing or video transmission with high quality.

What that means in Layman’s terms is that one day soon not only will videophones be as small as your cell phone is now, but you may also be able to order things such as movies through your cell phone provider (such as T-Mobile or also Sprint PCI) that can be viewed on your cellular phones while you're waiting on the bus or sitting around with nothing to do. In fact, television and radio broadcasting may even be around the corner somewhere down the road.

Also see; glossary of cell phone terms and definitions.

Author Notes:

Bill Schnarr contributes and publishes news editorial to http://www.cell-phones-n-plans.com. A cell phone industry resource that features service plan comparisons, cellular phone reviews and articles.