Starting last month, Sprint began to test what they call “Picture Mail Stage 3 Intercarrier”. In other words, the ability to send and receive pictures and videos from other carrier implementations of MMS. Currently, the service is in testing, and is expected to finish such testing later this month. It is unknown at this time if Sprint plans to promote this feature heavily or not.
Currently, the service works with Cingular, T-Mobile, and Verizon, though eventually it should work with every CDMA and GSM carrier. Nextel support is planned for the future, but is not currently available due to the technical differences in the iDEN network.
This is an upset to Cingular, who had stated publicly that they had planned to become the first carrier to support every national carrier’s implementation of MMS. Considering the importance of Nextel picture interoperability as a part of the Sprint Nextel merger, it is unlikely that Cingular will accomplish this goal before Sprint.
