Telecom companies to terminate MMS service in phased manner

Hyderabad: Multi-Media Services which are being offered by all mobile networks will be withdrawn in a phased manner.

MMS was introduced by mobile operators in south India in 2000-01, and about 5,000 users, mostly those with GPRS (General Pocket Radio Service) signed up in the city in 2002.

The numbers went up to 6 lakh by the end of 2014. But with 3G services catching up and data services like WhatsApp offering free messaging services, the demand for MMS has fallen.

Telecom Advisory Committee member J Nagaraju told this newspaper that the number of MMS users was falling and the servers established to set up these services were becoming a burden on telecom operators.

“All telecom operators across the country have requested the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India for permission to close these services and got a positive response,” he said.

He said the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited had decided to suspend MMS from February 14. The other operators will close MMS services as per their convenience. “They may announce their decision in a week,” he said.

With the increase in the use of email, the postal department stopped telegram services from June 2015. MMS has become outdated in the face of newer and faster technologies, Mr Nagaraju said.