As per the information forwarded by AT&T on Thursday, a September 25 update for the Apple iPhone 3G and 3GS will enable the US-based users of these devices to avail the multimedia messaging service. The long-awaited functionality would allow users to send MMS text messages, after they download the forthcoming software update.

While most experts opined that the MMS functionality should have been made available to the iPhones much earlier, AT&T elaborated that given the extensive usage of the multimedia capabilities of the iPhone, the company needed to ensure that the anticipated high volumes of MMS traffic could be delivered a flawless experience right at the outset!

However, about the other much-awaited feature, tethering, Microsoft said that it will not be part of the update package. Though last November, AT&T had officially confirmed that tethering - a process that helps connect the cell phone with a laptop to the Internet, mostly via Bluetooth - was "coming soon," the feature is yet to be activated.

Talking about tethering, an AT&T spokeswoman wrote in an -email: "As for tethering, by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect. We expect to offer tethering in the future."