Why AT&T won’t support MMS and tethering on the iPhone 3GS

One of the most incredible surprises at yesterday's WWDC keynote address wasn't the iPhone 3GS' more CPU, more RAM, 3MP camera or its battery -- it was that AT&T won't be offering MMS and tethering to its U.S. iPhone customers, at least initially.

My colleague David Morgenstern wrote about the outrage that's brewing with AT&T about the omission of two major iPhone OS 3.0 features.

In case you're wondering why AT&T won't be offering MMS and tethering until "late summer" Boy Genius Report offers this explanation. It's because "AT&T has to manually remove all the “Opt Out MMS codes” on each account."

Really AT&T?

Don't you have some kind of whiz-bang script that could flip that little bit of information on each account? Someone has to manually remove the code? Really? If true, this makes me more scared that ever to be a AT&T customer.

BGR also notes that tethering is also on hold for AT&T's U.S. customers because it's in the process of putting together a $70 per month unlimited data and tethering plan. SMS and MMS will not be included in that plan, sadly.