Does Fido have MMS now?

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Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

"mistaroboto" <mistaroboto@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:e_8jc.246731$Pk3.243692@pd7tw1no...
> > I really hope Fido weather's the storm Telus is throwing at it because
of
> > Cityfido, because although I'm with Rogers right now, if Fido
implemented
> > Cityfido where I live I'd switch in a flash (assuming Bell would allow
me
> to
> > keep my sympatico DSL without a landline, I've heard rumours they do).
> TTYL
>
> Where do you live?

Toronto.
 
Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

Went though the Fido web site, They have a FAQ on the MMS service.

Basically, it is $0.25 surcharge for each MMS message sent, but no surcharge
for MMS message received. Both pay the normal GRPS data consumption charges.
(But the recipient can refuse delivery of the "package" - the notice of a
package being available is free however).

Sending MMS to an email address is not yet supported by microcell. (I find
this interesting; if they bother installing the MMS gateway software/hardware,
wouldn't that include the email gateway out of the box ?)

Not sure how sending an email with attachement from the handset compares with
sending the same attachement via MMS in terms of GPRS bandwidth consumed. (in
an email, the attachement is encoded in base64 which requires roughly 25% more
bytes to send) ( each 8 bit byte sent over the line carries only 6 bits of the
original document).

MMS is limited to 50 documents.
So, a 50k document encoded as base64 requires 66.6k. This means 16 k for the
base64 encoding overhead. At $0.03 per kilobyte, this is roughly $0.50

So, unless you have spare bandwidth on your GPRS package, and *IF* MMS sends
the data "raw" without encoding, it would mean that sending an email via MMS
(when available) will end up costing less even with the $0.25 surcharge.


Oh, and while Fido now has the software to support WAP-Push, they have not
upgraded their proxy server to the internet to carry the WAP specific HTTP
headers that provide some identification of the subscriber which is needed by
the remote site to send back a WAP Push response to that customer. (usually,
that subscriber ID is some random number assigned to a customer).
 
Archived from groups: alt.cellular.fido (More info?)

> Basically, it is $0.25 surcharge for each MMS message sent, but no
surcharge
> for MMS message received. Both pay the normal GRPS data consumption
charges.
> (But the recipient can refuse delivery of the "package" - the notice of a
> package being available is free however).

From what I was told by the CSR I spoke to, you do not pay any GPRS fees,
only $0.25 per message sent. On the website, when they say "GPRS roaming
usage charges apply to both sent and received messages, even during the
period when picture messages are free," I believe they mean gprs roaming
fees when you are not on the Fido network. From what I gathered from the
CSR, anything going through the MMS apn is not billed as GPRS usage, it is
billed at $0.25 per use. To receive the notice and the MMS are free, for
now.

CU