business

When Kyle Irving of Rosemount couldn't send or receive photos on his iPhone in late July, he thought AT&T had misled him about the phone's new "multimedia messaging service."

The service, called MMS for short, allows iPhone users to easily send photos, videos and audio from one cell phone to another without using e-mail. It was added to the iPhone for the first time this year, although it's been available on other cell phones since at least 2003.

Irving, who said he'd given up another cell phone with MMS capability to buy the new iPhone, said AT&T sales representatives assured him the MMS service would work in July, when in fact it was available only in other countries and wasn't turned on in the United States until Friday.

As a result, Irving sued AT&T and Apple in Minneapolis federal court last week over the delay between late July, when he bought the phone, and Friday. The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges breach of contract and deceptive and illegal trade practices by Apple, manufacturer of the iPhone, and AT&T, which has the exclusive iPhone sales rights in the United States.

AT&T and Apple declined comment.

Irving's suit, and nine similar suits filed in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri and Ohio, may soon be consolidated in federal court in New Orleans at AT&T's request, said Irving's attorney, David Cialkowski of Zimmerman Reed in Minneapolis. The suits all seek to become class actions against Apple and AT&T, he said.

In an interview, Irving said the reason for his lawsuit "is not that I didn't have MMS for two months, but that the iPhone was represented, sold and marketed to me with the understanding that the MMS service would be available. It wasn't, and these two companies should be held accountable to consumers for that."

Some industry analysts said the delay in making MMS available may have been the result of AT&T worrying the new service would put such a heavy load on AT&T's cell phone network that it would degrade phone calls, Internet use and MMS for all customers.

Already, AT&T customers in some large cities have been complaining of cell service problems apparently related to heavy data use by pre-MMS iPhones. The New York Times reported that iPhone owners on average used about 10 times as much data as owners of other smart phones.

If those usage patterns hold true for MMS on the iPhone, it would give a big boost to MMS technology, which has languished until now. Verizon Wireless reported in its second quarter that old-fashioned text messages on its network out-numbered multimedia messages by 58 to 1.

"The fear was certainly that AT&T's network would be swamped by iPhones with MMS," said Roger Entner, head of telecommunications research at Nielsen Co. in New York. "I think AT&T decided they'd rather be late with MMS and do it right" by installing extensive network upgrades to handle anticipated MMS use.

In an interview, Irving said the AT&T MMS service still doesn't work very well in the Twin Cities because he still cannot receive photos sent from T-Mobile phones and was able to receive photos from Verizon Wireless phones only after several hours of delay.

But in separate interviews, other iPhone users in the Twin Cities said the iPhone MMS service was working well now.

"On Friday, the service was just terrible," said iPhone customer Joel Feder of St. Louis Park. "But on Saturday it seemed to work again, and on Tuesday it was sending pictures OK."

Another iPhone user, Jason Douglas of Hopkins, said he had been "waiting for this [MMS] for a while" and hadn't been disappointed. He it has worked well since Friday.

Steve Alexander • 612-673-4553