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posted by chromas on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:03AM   Printer-friendly

AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have finally agreed to replace SMS with a new RCS standard

All four major US carriers — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint — have each issued the same joint press release announcing the formation of "a joint venture" called the "Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative" (CCMI). It's designed to ensure that the carriers move forward together to replace SMS with a next-generation messaging standard — including a promise to launch a new texting app for Android phones that supports the standard by next year.

The Verge spoke with Doug Garland, general manager for the CCMI, to find out more about what this all means. RCS, if you don't know, is wickedly complicated on the backend from both a technical and (more importantly) a political perspective. But the CCMI's goal is to make all that go away for US consumers. Whether or not it can actually pull that off is more complicated.

First and foremost, CCMI intends to ship a new Android app next year that will likely be the new default messaging app for Android phones sold by those carriers. It will support all the usual RCS features like typing indicators, higher-resolution attachments, and better group chat. It should also be compatible with the global "Universal Profile" standard for RCS that has been adopted by other carriers around the world.

Garland says the CCMI will also work with other companies interested in RCS to make sure their clients are interoperable as well — notably Samsung and Google. That should mean that people who prefer Android Messages will be able to use that instead, but it sounds like there may be technical details to work out to make that happen.

Google is a fascinating and perhaps telling omission from the press release. Up until this point, the primary advocate for RCS has been Google, which bet on it as the only platform-level messaging service for Android. It was a bet that carriers haven't backed until now. Verizon isn't supporting RCS on the Pixel 4 after doing so on the Pixel 3, for example. Google recently stopped waiting for carriers in the UK and France and rolled out RCS support for Android phones using its own servers.

Google has been the world's biggest RCS advocate — and it was left out

[...] As for encryption, Garland wouldn't commit. He emphasizes that the CCMI intends to make sure that the chats are "private" and that the app it's making is "an experience [customers] can trust."

[...] There's reason for optimism but there's also reason to be worried. Carrier-made apps are notorious for being terrible, filled with ads and upsells. The CCMI says that "more details will be announced a later date." We'll be watching to see what the app situation will be, when exactly in 2020 it will launch, and whether Google (or even Apple) will have anything to say about it.

Rich Communication Services (RCS)


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @04:20AM (#911978)

    It will support all the usual RCS features like typing indicators

    Simply: no.

    The sender of a text message has no need to know any of:

    1. whether I have, or have not read, the text message
    2. when I am typing a reply to some text message they have sent

    The only information they should ever get is my reply message, should I choose to send one.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +5  
       Insightful=3, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5