Where Is AT&T On MMS And Tethering?
by Ian
June 9, 2009
It's hard to anger the attendees at the WWDC. They're a captive audience of geeky journalists, tech fans, and Apple developers who hang on every word coming from the mouths of Apple's spokespeople. There's a lot of clapping and they're routinely impressed when the company debuts whatever new thing is drag and droppable in Mac OS X.
But today we heard something very different - boos. This year, AT&T made the WWDC attendees very angry. Twice. Around the world, 22 carriers will be offering tethering plans so iPhone users can connect their computers to the Internet using the phone's connection and 29 carriers will be ready to send MMS messages when iPhone OS 3.0 launches next week. AT&T is absent from both of these lists. There are simply no excuses here and everyone knows it. From the poor reception to the bad customer service to the non-existant tech support, AT&T has never been on anybody's number one carrier list and this appears to be another confirmation of that fact. According to Apple, AT&T will be ready for MMS sometime this summer. Boy Genius Report says the reason for the lack of MMS at launch is that "AT&T has to manually remove all the 'Opt Out MMS codes' on each account. In essence, all iPhone AT&T account holders are marked as opting out of MMS messages. BGR goes on to say that by removing the code, MMS messages will work on the iPhone immediately. Our own expert Nic Elder says that it's not that simple. Two things need to happen for MMS to work on iPhone. 1.) AT&T has to remove the opt-out MMS flag on the account. 2.) Apple needs to update the carrier settings to enable the MMS options on the phone. But the bigger issue here really is tethering. It's an essential feature thousands of users worldwide absolutely need a year ago. How could 22 carriers be ready to offer tethering on the iPhone and AT&T not be on that list? This can't bode well for AT&T exclusivity in the United States as it makes Apple look bad. I almost wonder if Steve Jobs wasn't at the event today for health reasons - because he broke his fist punching a wall over AT&T's fail here.