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MMS to be included with O2’s iPhone tariffs

By Matt Radford on April 6, 2009

Behold the power of Twitter! I asked @O2UKOfficial – which is O2’s presence on Twitter – a question this morning:

What’s the plan for MMS on monthly tariffs when iPhone OS 3.0 comes out? 1 MMS = 4 SMS as usual?


And the reply:

we will confirm this when the software becomes available

Excellent! It’s good to hear that I’ll finally have a use for the hundreds of texts in my tariff that currently go unused, and that iPhone users won’t be charged extra to send picture messages.

This news is backed up by developers testing the beta of iPhone OS 3.0, who have already had MMS enabled for their iPhone accounts. MMS billing is being treated as on any other phone. Incidentally, if you do want to send MMS on your iPhone running 3.0 beta now, then you’ll first need to convince O2 to authorise the change. Then install the modified carrier setting (IPCC) files, which are available for contract and PAYG.

Other bits from the O2 Forum

O2’s iPhone FAQ is wrong.

“Yes, just like any other handset you can change the length of time the iPhone rings before diverting to voicemail by entering **61*901*NN# SEND (NN is the number of seconds in increments of 5 and a maximum of 30 seconds).”

This code is incorrect. It should be “**61*901*11*NN# SEND”

It also seems that you can sign up to an O2 tariff as a sole trader on a business tariff, then upgrade after one year instead of 18 months. See the forum thread here.

  • Iain 117

    Regarding upgrading, because the iPhone 3G was subsidized as opposed to paying full price for the iPhone 2G, do you think o2 will allow 3G contract goers to upgrade 6 months early for the new iPhone in June/July(?) like they did with the customers who bought the 2G? Or do you think they’ll make the customers wait this time around because they got the 3G at a lower cost?

  • http://www.allaboutiphone.net Matt Radford

    Hard to say. Customers who upgraded from 2G to 3G early will still have at least 6 months to run on their contracts come July, when the new iPhone is likely to be available. I think it’ll depend on whether iPhone stays exclusive to O2. If it does, my feeling is 3G upgraders won’t get an early release and upgrade to the new iPhone. If it doesn’t, then O2 may allow early upgrades to avoid too much churn.