MMS GATEWAY : HOW DOES MMS WORK ?

MMS is implemented using a combination of WAP and SMS technologies. MMS enables multimedia messages containing content such as pictures, graphics, music, images, and ringtones. The MMS standard, based on 3GPP & WAP Forum standards, includes an MMS mail client on the device, a WAP - gateway for sending & receiving messages & a multimedia messaging service center ( MMSC ) for storing, transcoding and relaying messages. The process of delivering an MMS message to a mobile phone handset works like this:

1) It starts with a content file that contains the content of an
MMS message. This message may have been created by an application, or it may have been created by a user sending the message from a mobile phone. (when the message is sent from a mobile phone, a mobile phone connects to an MMSC via WAP and transmits the MMS message content to an MMSC & the MMSC then takes responsibility for further delivery.)

2.) The MMS message content is published (usually by an MMSC) so
that it is accessible via a URL.

3.) An MMS notification message is sent to the recipient mobile
phone, encapsulated in a WAP push message, which itself is encoded
as a binary SMS (the WAP protocols define an encoding for WAP push
over GSM SMS). This MMS notification message contains header
information about the MMS message, and a URL pointer that tells
the mobile phone how to retrieve the MMS message content.

4.) The recipient mobile phone opens a WAP session, and retrieves
the MMS message content from the URL contained in the MMS
notification message.

That's pretty simplified, but that's a good brief overview. In
most of the cases above, the WAP sessions are TCP / IP over GPRS
(although this is not an essential requirement).v