Not connected on their side and charging me for it.

Question

I just recently signed up as a new customer for Internet only service. I opted for the self install kit, because I am an IT tech and work with this stuff on a daily basis, and have hooked up and wiring houses with cable more times than I can count. When I got the self install kit I hooked it up, the power and WiFi light both turn on solid and the us/ds light just sat there blinking. I tried every jack in my home with the same results. I then called xfinity to ensure that the service had actually been activated and they told me they would have to send a tech out to check my wiring. I told them I would check inside the house, and if I need a tech to come out I would call back. From there I followed every jack that I have from the wall outlet all the way outside to the Comcast box. Then I followed the cable from the Comcast box until it went underground. All of the cables are hooked up correctly. Obviously I can not see what is actually hooked up inside the Comcast box because there is a lock on it and I can not see where the cable underground runs to. So, I called xfinity back and told them everything in my house is hooked up correctly and a tech needs to come out and check to make sure what's inside the box is hooked up correctly and make sure the other end of the cable going underground is properly connected. I was told on the phone that if it was a problem from the the box to anything inside my home I would be charged $30 and if it was anything outside the home leading up to the box or inside the box I would not be charged. Later this afternoon I recieved an email saying I am getting charged $50 for a failed self install kit before the tech has even came out. Has anyone else run into this problem? I am very upset about this because I know the problem is not inside my house.

Answer 1

MMS may not "work" in the sense that you cannot send MMS without cellular data, but you should be able to receive MMS messages as URLs (as opposed to the actual MMS message).
Keep in mind that MMS is not like SMS. MMS does depend on Internet access to send and receive the media content. When you send data by MMS, your handset encodes the media as a MIME message and posts it to an MMSC (special web service provided by your carrier). The carrier then determines the recipient and either forwards to another carrier, or forwards an SMS controll message with the URL at which to receive the media content. Depending on how your account is configured with your carrier, you will either receive an SMS message with a URL, or your phone will automatically receive the URL and try fetch the media content from the carrier's server and display it in your SMS/MMS application.
The key part is that MMS always requires cellular data (Internet) access to send MMS data, and optionally requires it to retrieve the message (if it's disabled, you *should* receive an SMS message with a URL where you can find your MMS content, but that's up to the carrier).
For MMS to work normally, cellular data is required. That's inherent in the protocol. Look up the Wikipedia entry on MMS for details.