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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)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @05:08AM (2 children)
Your understanding is correct. This being a network protocol designed by phone companies, it is based on rigid time division multiplexing. That control packet in the tower handshake was going to transmit in its time slot, whether it had any useful data or not to send (because rigid time division multiplexing).
So sending an SMS during a timeslot where you would otherwise send a "nothing to send" message, is free.
That would be because by far too many people are completely ignorant of technology, and do not want to ever learn anything. So they willingly pay big bucks for something that cost the telephone carriers zero extra to provide, simply because they don't want to ever learn anything about their tech., which might enable them to understand they are being massively overcharged.
There's a reason why, back in the day of copper phone lines, I never paid for "touch tone" service from Ma Bell. I understood the tech., and understood that "touch tone" service was cheaper for Ma Bell to provide than pulse dial. So I refused to pay them for the privilege of something that was actually cheaper for them to provide. Then, eventually, one day, touch tone just magically started working, even without my ever having paid for it. Why? Because it really was cheaper for Ma Bell to provide than pulse dial handling, and they eventually just quietly turned it on because it did, as I knew all along, save them money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @07:06AM
And yet, despite that 9-1 competitive advnatage you saw "back in the day" you didn't step up and do it at 8-1 margin?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday October 26 2019, @03:29PM
I remember making them remove it from my BBS line because I could care less if my system clicked or beeped when it dialed. Good times.
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