The easiest way to send an MMS message through the gateway is to connect to the “web menu interface”. If you do not recall how to connect to the “web menu interface” with your web browser, refer to Send an SMS Message to refresh your memory.

Select “Send MMS Message” from the “web menu interface”, and you will see a web page similar to the following:

 

 

The web menu interface provides two methods for sending an MMS message. The “Send MMS Message” option allows you to define a subject, message text, and optionally include multiple content files (uploaded via the browser). Content files may include text files, audio files, image files, SMIL files, and/or other supported MMS content types. The gateway automatically compiles the MMS message file and uses the gateway’s built-in MMSC to send the message.

The “Send MMS Noification” option is for sending notifications for pre-compiled content residing on other content services, and is an advanced topic beyond the scope of this “Quick Start Guide”.

To send your first MMS message, enter the “Phone Number” for the recipient, supply some text for the “Subject” of the message, and enter some text for the “Text” of the message. For your first test, you may want to leave the “Content File” fields blank, but if you’re ambitions, you could try specifying the filename of a small “jpeg” or “gif” file as one of the “Content File” entries. Click “Submit” to send your message.

Does your browser return an error message?

Your browser might return an error message when you submit the MMS message. Here’s what happens behind the scenes when you click “Submit”: The SMS/MMS gateway creates a compiled MMS message file, and submits it to the local MMSC. The MMSC provides the SMS/MMS gateway with a URL for retrieving the message, based upon the MMSC configuration information defined in Step 4. In particular, the MMSC tells the SMS/MMS gateway that to retrieve the message that was just submitted, it should connect to “Local Host Name or IP Address” on the “HTTP Port Number”. If the MMSC is configured incorrectly, the SMS/MMS gateway will not be able to retrieve the URL from the MMSC and an error will occur. Of course, it is preferable that the error occur here rather than occurring when a mobile phone attempts to retrieve the MMS content, so you’ll want to correct any configuration errors from Step 4 before continuing.

Do you receive an MMS notification message, but are unable to access the message content?

• Re-configure your MMSC to use HTTP port 80. Some operator WAP gateways have firewalls that prevent access to any content that is on a port other than port 80. If you are sending an MMS notification message where the content server resides on a port other than 80, change the content server to use HTTP port 80. Repeat your attempt to send an MMS message. Note that changing these settings will only affect messages that are sent after the change is made, they will not change attributes of messages that were already sent.

• Check the WAP profile that is associated with the MMS setup in your phone, and verify that this is the same WAP profile that you use for regular WAP browsing activities. It has been noticed that some operators are setting up restrictive MMS profiles, where the MMS profile connects to a separate GPRS APN, and a separate WAP gateway, which only allow access to the operator MMSC. After changing the MMS setup to use the WAP profile that you use for regular WAP browsing activities, repeat your test. You should not need to resend any messages, but can retry accessing messages for which notification was already received.

• It is possible that your operator has constructed a “walled garden” in attempts to lock users to their content services. To leave the walled garden, check with your operator to determine what GPRS APN (access point name) should be used for PDA/PC type connections, and if a username or password is required, what those values should be. Create a WAP profile on your phone that connects to that GPRS APN. Specify an IP address for the WAP gateway of 213.48.20.10 (this is a gateway at the Now Wireless offices, if you have your own WAP gateway, substitute that gateway IP address). Try using that WAP profile to browse to a site, such as http://mms.now.co.uk/index.wml. Switch back to your normal WAP settings for browsing, but configure the MMS services on your phone to use the WAP profile that you just created.

• Are you using your own WAP gateway instead of the operator WAP gateway, or does your operator not yet support MMS? MMS requires that WAP gateways support “SAR” (segmentation and re-assembly). Some early WAP gateways did not provide this support. If you are unsure about your WAP gateway, you may want to try using the public WAP gateway referenced in the previous item.