One of the biggest problems we face in cellular data is the lack of MMS interoperability.

If I'm on Cingular, and you're on Verizon, and our friend is with U.S. Cellular, in other words, we can easily exchange short text messages. But exchanging, say, photos or music is nearly impossible.

CTIA didn't answer that challenge, but it turns out CeBIT in Germany did . An outfit called conVISUAL in Oberhausen, Germany (near Dusseldorf, in the Ruhr, the heart of the Bundesliga), did.

Their solution is elegant. Send a text to an SMS short-code (a five-digit number) and the MMS comes in return.

The company is thinking that advertisers might be interested in distributing files using these short codes, and that might be. But if the address on the SMS is a mail service, and the content of the text is a mailbox number, it could provide true MMS interoperability.

Could have used y'all in N'awlins.