T Mobile - USA Picture messaging

[macladd]

Hi there,

Can anyone help. I live in the UK and have service on the ORANGE network, friends are in the USA (California) on T-Mob USA. We all have Sony Ericsson T-610 camera phones. I can send/receive picture messages - both in UK and Europe, friends on T-Mob can send/receive within USA on all networks. Problem is that we CANNOT get them from each other. When I send a picture msg to them, it arrives as a text message asking them to view it on the web, when they send one to me, nothing arrives - not even a text message Orange in the UK say they DO have an inter-connectivity agreement with T-Mob USA, T-Mob in the USA frankly did not know what we were talking about! All our phones have correct settings etc. We are really frustrated as we just cannot get it to work.....anyone got any ideas??

PS Why is signal quality in the USA so bad? are the cell towers not as powerful over there.......even in cities/inside buildings my signal was terrible. I have never had a call dropped inside a building or in an urban area over here in the UK

[MikeUK]

Well with T-Mob UK I had to set up GPRS first before I could recieve picture message straight to my phone, I always had to go onto the web.

[Box215]

Originally Posted by macladd

Hi there,

Can anyone help. I live in the UK and have service on the ORANGE network, friends are in the USA (California) on T-Mob USA. We all have Sony Ericsson T-610 camera phones. I can send/receive picture messages - both in UK and Europe, friends on T-Mob can send/receive within USA on all networks. Problem is that we CANNOT get them from each other. When I send a picture msg to them, it arrives as a text message asking them to view it on the web, when they send one to me, nothing arrives - not even a text message Orange in the UK say they DO have an inter-connectivity agreement with T-Mob USA, T-Mob in the USA frankly did not know what we were talking about! All our phones have correct settings etc. We are really frustrated as we just cannot get it to work.....anyone got any ideas??

PS Why is signal quality in the USA so bad? are the cell towers not as powerful over there.......even in cities/inside buildings my signal was terrible. I have never had a call dropped inside a building or in an urban area over here in the UK

Firstly, our cell phone service is fine here. Dunno what youre talking about, but if you were on ATT, then it explains it all.

Secondly, here in the US, you can only send picture messages to people who have the same service (T-Mobile to T-Mobile, Cingular to Cingular). You CANNOT send picture messages to other carriers. LIke i cant sent a picture message to my friend who has Cingular, or my other friend who has Sprint. So of course there would be no sending of picture messages internationally. The only thing that would make sense is if you could send picture messages from a T-Mobile USA phone to a T-Mobile UK phone, but i doubt even that would work.

[kjac081]

you could also send them to an email address from the phone.Either your home email, or phones email should work .

[TheZodiac]

Sending pics to email adresses might work yes, good point

You could also do this ( and it might be more fun) to set up a blog that you can enail them to and it audo posts them to a private site, then you could view them over your wap/gprs. Just a suggestion.

I find that textamerica.com works best for this purpose.

In the end - I guess doing it in an email is the best way.

I have a tmobile sidekick - and I have friends in Germany with one also - we have no issue sending pics back and forth with them through the meail service. Just htoug i wold mention that.

I guess what you need is (if you cannot come to a solution internelly) is to use an intermedium with a blog site or something As I said before, I ahve found this to be the best solution for me personally with people on different and uncompatible picture messaging networks.

[SurrealNetworks]

Things are changing - for over a month now T-Mobile customers can send picture messages to ATT customers and vice versa. This arrangement was made slightly prior to the ATT<>Cingular MMS agreement. Soon inter-carrier MMS will be a reality! Remember when SMS only worked within your carrier? Inphomatch is the company that makes intercarrier SMS work in the states (I believe they were bought out recently).

Oh yeah, in regards to cellular service in the US not being as good as the UK - well its simple economics. The United States is 3,537,441 square miles. The entire United Kingdom is only 94,248 square miles (that includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland!) Although cell service isn't new in the US you have to consider that in the beginning there were lots of different competing technologies... to this day you have CDMA, GSM, iDEN and TDMA. Now of course the two competing technologies are GSM and CDMA; two non-compatible technologies AND you have the US wireless customers split between 6 major companies (of course there are LOTS of smaller carriers too). I believe all 6 major providers of wireless service have 20,000 - 30,000 live cell towers EACH. I'm pretty sure the overall cost of a cell site a while back was over 500,000 dollars each with costs now in the 200,000 dollar range. I haven't done the math but to sum up your question just look at land area vs number of wireless customers divided by competing carriers. Not to mention the extreme value of our wireless plans cutting deeply into profits of debt burdened companies.

Sorry for the huge post, I'm long winded sometimes!