RCS, or Rich Communication Services, was to unite the Androids. But with the news that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have all given up efforts for a unified messaging platform, it seems turbulent times for the green bubbles.
According to telecom news center Read lightthe three major carriers have all pulled out of the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) that aimed to standardize RCS by 2020. Led by Sprint in 2019, the CCMI was a consortium with plans to develop an RCS-dependent messaging app for Android users so that they would have a platform similar to Apple’s iMessage. RCS provides improved messaging and is already standard in overseas markets. It enables features like read receipts, higher quality media and better group conversations – which iMessage users have enjoyed for years. The idea was that the CCMI would evolve another app that Android users can download to have all these functions in between.
But the CCMI was dead in the water at the time of its announcement. Google has long talked about Android’s support for RCS, but the company was not even mentioned in the original CCMI press release. Sprint, the CCMI’s torchbearer, then folded under the wings of T-Mobile. And more RCS-compatible messaging apps hit the Play Store, including those from Google Messages, which further adds to the fragmentation already prevalent on the platform.
For their part, the three major U.S. carriers have been relatively silent on the matter, with Verizon telling Light Reading to blame the CCMI’s owners.
So far, that’s the only carrier fully committed to RCS is T-Mobile, with plans to make Messages the standard on all smartphones purchased from the carrier in the future. That does not solve the problem of interoperability between Android users, however. Verizon and AT&T are still peddling their own messaging apps on devices sold over their networks. And while both providers have offered their commitments to RCS, it’s still limited to chats within their respective networks.
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RCS is a standard that was introduced in 2008 as the next generation SMS version, which we still use to send SMS messages. However, SMS is quite dated technology, and apps like WhatsApp have gained popularity for their advanced capabilities. Google has been the biggest cheerleader for RCS, even buying middleware company Jibe and bundling it into posts to speed up compatibility.
The only way true RCS compatibility will come to all Android users is if the carriers default to the app that already supports it and throw the rest away. But that’s not going to happen, because carriers haven’t figured out how to make money with it. And it still doesn’t solve the problem of chatting with iOS devices – Apple probably doesn’t support the standard keep iMessage exclusive to Apple devices.
Android users have long complained about the siled messaging economy on the platform. Perhaps the best way to deal with this as an Android user is to set the Messages app as your default in protest of all these complicated efforts. That seems to be what Google is betting on anyway.