Is O2 about to enable MMS for iPhones well before the next release of the handset, rumoured to be in June? Word reaches us from a reader that, having made “several phone calls to different sections of the company” O2 will “officially” switch on MMS services for the iPhone within the next few weeks. To be clear this applies to O2 customers, within the UK only – and it’s only rumour, so be warned.

Of course he could have been talking to anyone, but it’s interesting that customer service reps are saying “a few weeks” when we already know that that the iPhone 3.0 platform, which supports MMS, won’t be available until the summer, or around June. So either Apple is planning a small update between now and then (unlikely) or O2 will enable MMS somehow at their end. They also found out that:

MMS messages will be taken out of your original allowance (i.e. if you signed up to the £35 contract you had 500 messages), the MMS messages will be deduced from the allowance as 4 messages per message (so if you have a £35 contract you will get 125 MMS messages). If you have the unlimited text bolt on this WILL NOT give you additional MMS messages, you can only use your bolt on for standard SMS messages. O2 did not comment on whether they would be providing a MMS bolt on of any kind, they also did not comment on how much additional MMS messages would be if you over run your allowed amount. Pay and Go iPhone users will be charged out of their current balance, and that I could be around 35p per MMS message sent.

He drew a blank on tethering – allowing customers to connect a laptop to the Internet via the iPhone.
I’ll put a call into O2 and see what they have to say about this…