Multimedia messaging service for GPRS and UMTS

Mobile telecommunications networks will evolve to a great extent in the future. They will offer higher data rates and provide new services for nomadic users. The development of packet switched data bearers for 3/sup rd/ generation wireless networks will enable support for multimedia applications as well. Multimedia can be divided into real-time and non-real-time services. In this paper we concentrate on a new non-real-time multimedia service called multimedia messaging service (MMS). Multimedia messaging service allows mobile subscribers to exchange arbitrary types of information in a store-and-forward manner. Multimedia messages may consist of text, images, audio or video clips, or any combination of these. A new network element called multimedia messaging service center is needed for storing and forwarding the messages. We describe in more detail what we mean by multimedia messaging service. We also analyze the different architectural options for supporting multimedia messaging within UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service for GSM) networks.