I know this is an old post, however I have contacted HTC and Ntelos. Here is the reply from HTC.
Thank you for contacting HTC regarding your Hero. I understand that you are unable to receive, or send I assume, picture messages.
The reason that you cannot use the picture message feature is that you carrier declined to have this feature in the operating system. Picture messaging is not a supported feature on Android 1.5 for the Hero for your carrier.
I want to apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. I want to thank you for contacting HTC.
Here is Ntelos.
Thank you for your inquiry, at this point we do not have a exact date.
We have been informed it will be this year. Have a good day.
Now dose anyone know of a app that will work around this? I really like my hero but I switched to a quantico because of the picture texting problem with the hero.
Jeff
We have been informed it will be this year. Have a good day.