Submitted by Mike Grenville on Fri, 30 Sep 2005 17:31

3’s customers in the UK can send MMS to any email address and recipients can reply by email within five days.

The ‘MMS-to-Email’ MMS arrives in the recipients inbox embedded in a formatted HTML email. Upon responding, the email text is then transformed into an MMS. The service closes the MMS communication loop so network differences and international coverage are no longer issues for MMS senders and ensures all MMS get to intended email recipients. MMS to email costs users 25p for a picture message and 50p for video, replying is free.

When an email is received on a PC, the recipient and can either Play the Video MMS using Real Time or another player or look at the text and pictures included within the MMS

The recipient of the MMS is also given the opportunity to respond to the sender for free with up to 500 characters of text which is delivered back to the sender’s handset as a text-only MMS.

The service has been provided to 3 by Yospace. “3’s MMS-to-Email service is set to drive MMS usage on its network,” said David Springall, Yospace’s CTO. “Users need to feel reassured that their MMS will reach eventual recipients regardless of network or country. Our MMS-to-Email Gateway takes away one of the few remaining obstacles to mass use of MMS.”

The operator has 3 million customers compared with over 800 million internet users worldwide that can be communicated with.

“People want to be able to send MMS to anyone, from anywhere,” commented Jason Bradley, 3’s Director of Communication Products. “This is what mobile technology is all about. MMS-to-email is an ideal way to drive MMS uptake, by integrating with a communications technology everyone already uses, internet email." SpinVox's voice-to-text is also promoted by the operator.

The launch of MMS-to-email is being supported by an MMS marketing campaign called “reasons to send” that will highlight the benefits of using video and picture messaging.