Mobile News

The MMSC uses a WAP PPG to send the notification to the MMS handset. This is how the MMS handset is informed of messages available for retrieval. The URI of the message that the MMS handset is to use for the retrieval is included as a data component.

The retrieval activity is performed by the MMS handset using the WSP/HTTP GET method on the URI provided. The fetch of the URI returns a response that contains the multimedia message to be presented to the user.

The MMSC may request information that would permit it to know that the message was received by the MMS handset. A distinct acknowledgement is passed from the MMS handset to the MMSC, which would again use WAP push technology to inform the originating handset with the delivery notification message.

WAP provides a mechanism to inform an origin server, such as the MMSC, of the capabilities of the MMS user agent. This is known as the user agent profile (UAProf). It provides information about the characteristics of the display (e.g. size, colour support and bit depth), supported content types and network limitations (e.g. maximum message size).

The UAProf data can be conveyed when the MMS handset performs a WSP/HTTP operation, such as a GET, to an origin server. It is up to the origin server to decode the data, extracting any device characteristics needed, to guide the content generation or filtering operation it performs before returning data to the handset.

The MMSC should be able to use the capability information to make adjustments to the delivered message contents. For example, it should be able to delete a message component if the content type is not supported by the terminal.