An otherwise dull standards forum – OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) World in London – was enlightened by an unexpected tiff between a prestigious speaker from Orange and a Microsoft delegate. And naturally it was over the iPhone.
Phillipe Lucas – a head tech honcho from France Telecom/Orange, was espousing the virtues of MMS (picture messaging) to a somewhat surprised audience.
MMS has, of course, proved to be something of an unmitigated disaster. Lucas maintains, however, that the MMS standard is now entirely stable and that there are at least 1.3 billion MMS-capable handsets out there.
What's more, the fact that there are now so many cameraphones in existence has given an unexpected boost to users' desires to send picture messages.
So, according to Lucas, now is the time to reactivate MMS. He wasn't prepared, however, for a searching question from the Vole's representative at OMA World, Dave Turner.
If France Telecom/Orange is so keen on MMS, he asked, then why is Orange France selling the Iphone – a cameraphone noted for its entire lack of an MMS client?
To top it all, wasn't it up to operators like Orange to insist on a minimum set of specs, which would surely include MMS, Turner enquired?
Lucas was visibly thrown by this and could only retort that the Iphone had a pretty pathetic camera anyway. Iphone enthusiasts would obviously disagree.
It wasn't the poor man's day because the next questioner asked about MMS roaming. Sending a picture message whilst roaming on a 'foreign network' is still is something of hit and miss business.
Yet here was France Telecom was urging other to revisit MMS and promote it. Lucas didn't have a good answer to that one either.
