AT&T Promised MMS On The iPhone By "Late Summer"

Remember back in June when I picked up my brand new iPhone 3GS on launch day and AT&T promised that MMS would be on the iPhone by “late summer” – well, guess what?  It’s almost September.  In fact, it will be September in two (2) days.  Now, I fully understand the seasonal schedule and that Fall doesn’t officially begin until September 22nd.  Nonetheless, most people (at least that I ever met) consider Summer to be over after labor day (including myself).

So, while, technically, AT&T hasn’t not kept their word (yet), they are getting awfully close.  Here is why I’m a little skeptical about this whole MMS on the iPhone thing.  It wouldn’t be the first time AT&T has made major blunders.  But, more realistically, from what I understood of the current AT&T systems setup for iPhone customers – each iPhone customer would have be manually opt-back-in to MMS.  I may be wrong on that fact, but I’ve read (and heard) it in multiple places.  Nonetheless, that is a whole lot of accounts to go through.  I’m not saying it’s not doable with a large amount of people dedicated to opting-in people every single day for roughly 3 months, but it is definitely a lot of tedious work to do.  My theory always has been that AT&T was going to have all their interns working on it this summer and that they were hoping it would be done by the time they all left to go back to school.  Well, school’s either started or starting very soon and I still don’t have MMS.

Now, I’ve been pretty happy with my AT&T service with regards to having an actual cell phone signal.  I, honestly, can’t complain too much.  Sure, I would have liked to have MMS right away and sure I want tethering, but, I have been without these things for quite some time now and managed to manage without them just fine.  I still enjoy using my iPhone 3GS, I wouldn’t trade it in for another phone/mobile device.

I just wish AT&T would be more forthcoming with information regarding the issue, whether they will be on-time with it or not.  In fact, especially if they won’t be on-time with MMS.  Imagine that.  I see the law suits flying already – in fact, I recently read there are a few out there currently.  AT&T needs to work on being more transparent and more customer friendly.  The more blunders they make, the worse off they will be in the long term because eventually the iPhone will be on other providers and if people aren’t happy with AT&T they will go elsewhere for service.

So, AT&T, if you are going to be late with MMS, please be up front about it before the fact – not after.  The clock is ticking, lets all hope AT&T delivers (especially for their sake).