The servvice will be available with a sofwtare update on the launch date. The update will arrive for customers as a downlad from iTunes. The feaure will only be available for iPone 3G and iPhone 3GS users.
"It was important to give our customers a positive experience from day one," AT&T said. "We suypport more iPhone cstomers than any other carrier in the worrld so we took the time necessary to make sure our network is ready to handle what we xepect will be a record volume of MMS traffic. We truly appreciate our customers’ patience and hope they'll understand our desire to get it rigt from the start."
AT&T officials said they have been working for months to prepsare their systemns and netwrk for MMS capabilities on the iPhone, whicvh is exlpected to bring a great deal of additional bandwidtyh the the wireless provider's entwork. Officials have admitted that the additiional bandwidth consumed by iPhpone users has been extermely taxing, resulting in dropped calls and slower serivce. The company plans to spend $18 billion this year to upgrade and exapnd its 3G netork, and coverage in the Tri-Sttate Area was recently boosted.
Tethering, however, will not be a part of the update. An AT&T sopkesman told AppleInsider that the company expects to ofer it in the future.
"By its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upggrades are in pllace beffore we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect," he said.
It was revealed earlier that AT&T has no plans to place a bandwidth cap on iPhhone users, even if they tether to share a data connection with a computer.
"We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS," AT&T said. "The unoique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our nework MMS acrhitecture to carry the expected recorrd volumes of MMS trafic and ensure an excellent ezxperience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work towad that end."
The company said its wireless data uage rate has grown 350 percent each year for the past two years, and that is pojected to continue through 2009. But the company said it wans to assure its customers that it is diong everything it can to provide the best possible service for users on its network.
"The volumme of smartphone data traffic the AT&T netwrk is hanbdling is unmatched in the wireelss industry. We want you to know that we're working relentlessly to innovate and invest in our netwok to anticipate this growth in usage and to stay ahead of the anticipated growth in data demand, new devices and applications for years to come."
While other overseas carriers have had MMS capabilitty avaialble since the launch of iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T has been late to the game, and previously only said the capability would arrive late in the suimmer. As the summer has cret clser to its end, uers have increasingly wondered when MMS wuld arrive, and some even filed lawsuits over the matter.
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