How brain dead is AT&T?

I have to ask this question. At the Web 2.0 Expo the iPhone was everywhere. However The iPhone on AT&T has a dirty little secret. As an iPhone user have you ever received a Multimedia message? I don't mean an email with a picture from another iPhone user. I mean a cell phone multi-media message.

If you have received one of those pathetic messages from AT&T have you ever tried to access the web site they point you to from the Edge network. That's right - it doesn't work. So here is a cell phone company discouraging the use of the cell network. Yes, they expect you to use the wifi network. But then what is the point anyway. They convert the pictures at viewmymessage.com to Flash so you wouldn't be able to see them on your iPhone anyway.

Is AT&T so dumb that they can't convert the MMS to a JPeg file and email it to our primary iPhone email address?

I could go on. Hey, in for a penny in for a pound as they say...

The SMS Message that AT&T sends doesn't even allow you to launch the web page they point you to. I suppose that is a blessing since they don't let you access it over the edge network anyway.

But it gets more bizarre. I have a Blackberry on the Verizon Wireless network and I can key in the information in to the Blackberry browser to access the message at viewmymessage.com. Of course that browser does support Flash so I can save the picture to my media card to look at it later.

Obviously the Multi-Media Message Services is the dirty little secret of the AT&T iPhone. I can't believe that Steve Jobs (the real one, not my Twitter friend FSJ who brought the house down at the Web 2.0 Expo) hasn't read the riot act to AT&T. They manage to implement visual voice mail but they can't cope with visual pictures and the way they do it is with Flash that doesn't even run on the iPhone!

Come on, it is not as if the MMS technology is that new. It has been around for a good few years. Hey, FSJ why don't you loan Moshe to the Real Steve Jobs and send him down to sort out those AT&T engineers.

I am interested to hear from iPhone users on other services around the world. Can your iPhone handle MMS messages? Is there something Apple isn't telling us?