AT&T Finally Launches MMS?

You heard that right. After many weeks of iPhone owners bashing AT&T for not addressing the MMS issue, it seems AT&T is going to step up and deliver MMS this month. It’s true that most industry experts expected AT&T to get the job done sooner, but September 25th is soon enough as far as I am concerned. Apple fans have been upset with AT&T for a while after it announced that it was going to hold up introducing MMS till late summer. After all, owners in some other countries got their MMS service in June. AT&T blames the delay on the complexity of implementing such a feature:

We know many of our iPhone customers are eager for an update on our rollout schedule for Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS). We’ve been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches – and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers. MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.

We know that iPhone users will embrace MMS. The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone’s multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from Day One. We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end.

While I appreciate at&t finally stepping up to the plate and delivering MMS this fall, it’s still disappointing to see at&t make us wait a few good weeks to take advantage of multimedia messaging. at&t is a decent service provider but it’s time for Apple to step up and finally announce deals with other carriers. While the iPhone world is thankful to at&t for supporting the device in its early days, it’s time for Apple to give other carriers a chance to prove themselves. It’s just business.