MMS in Germany facing the end

Sending MMS has gone out of fashion. Vodafone Germany discontinued MMS service at the beginning of 2023. Now, competitors Deutsche Telekom, O2, and 1&1 are following suit. The service will be discontinued for all three at the end of June.

This will save network operators license fees, operating costs, and other expenses associated with MMS, such as customer service and MMS testing of new devices, as well as roaming. The prices for MMS in Germany have always been high; at the same time, German mobile providers only allow small file attachments. Both factors explain the modest use of Multimedia Messaging Service.

The service is around 25 years old; the first mention in the heise online archive concerns the Ericsson T68 mobile phone with MMS support, introduced at CeBIT 2001. Vodafone Germany launched MMS in April 2002, initially even free of charge. Deutsche Telekom followed in the middle of the year.

Today, mobile providers refer to RCS (Rich Communication Services) as an MMS replacement. However, the trend is towards independent services such as the non-commercial Signal or alternatives like Threema, Whatsapp, or Viber.

RCS: Problems with phone changes

Compared to MMS, RCS actually allows larger file attachments and thus higher-resolution images or longer audio recordings, and in many cases, it can also be used encrypted. However, once set up, RCS is not strictly tied to the SIM card. Therefore, new incoming RCS messages in existing chats may still be addressed to the old device even after inserting the SIM card into a new device, and thus may never arrive or fall into the wrong hands.

Unless you send an RCS message from the new phone to the communication partner yourself, it can take up to 30 days for the RCS server to recognize the device change. It is recommended to deactivate RCS on the old mobile phone before removing the SIM card, and then re-register for RCS on the new device if desired. If you use the Google Messenger and no longer have the old phone (or it is not functional), you can manually initiate RCS deregistration via a Google webpage.

Swiss mobile network operators already ended MMS service in 2023 and 2024, respectively. No shutdown plans are known from Austria, and we have inquired with the major providers. No one is tampering with SMS. While usage is also declining there, it is from a much higher level.

(ds)