In the US RCS Text Messaging is Now Bascially Dead (For Now)

[JLO64]

First time posting to tech news, sorry if I screw this up.

 

Summary

As initially reported by Light Reading, a joint effort to unite all major US network operators in providing RCS(Rich Communications Services) between each other has effectively ended.  RCS is a text messaging standard that has been around since 2010 but has failed to gain traction among telecom operators who have had little incentive to upgrade their systems to use it. It was designed to replace SMS with several features to make it competitive against services such as WhatsApp,Facebook Messenger, and iMessage with features such as typing indicators, presence information, read receipts, and location sharing. One of the most notable features it's missing is end-to-end encryption which most services I listed earlier have.

 

Quotes

Quote

 Verizon was a bit more blunt: "The owners of the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative decided to end the joint venture effort. However, the owners remain committed to enhancing the messaging experience for customers including growing the availability of RCS," the operator said in a statement to Light Reading.

One of the biggest issues RCS adoption faced was actually from Apple who have refused to support RCS.

Quote

RCS's second major problem is Apple, which will never support RCS unless the company has a major change of strategy. Earlier this month, the Epic Games lawsuit revealed internal Apple communication that made it clear the company views iMessage's exclusion of Android users as a competitive advantage, and RCS would poke holes in the walls of Apple's walled garden.

The most interesting wrinkle in all of this is Google, who is actually one of the biggest biggest player in RCS messaging through their Google Messaging app.

Quote

Google started rolling out RCS without the carriers by enabling RCS in the UK and France, provided both users were on Google Messages and had the "Chat" setting turned on. The whole point of RCS is its default-ness, though, as a lowest-common-denominator replacement for SMS, so it didn't make a ton of sense to have it as an optional extra in Google's messaging app. Google has been able to experiment with delivering services on top of RCS, like end-to-end encryption, provided both users are on Google Messages (and for one-on-one messages only).

 

My thoughts

Honestly I can't say I'm surprised by this but I am disappointed. The only entities who "win" in all this are probably Google/Apple (yay for big tech winning ) who get to promote their solutions. Granted this doesn't mean that RCS is dead. This is all happening within the US and I have no clue what the situation is like internationally. T-Mobile is actually partnering with Google within the US to provide RCS to it's customers through setting Google Messages as the default texting app on their phones, but T-Mobile is just one company out of several in the US.

 

If you're wondering what the heck RCS was and why it was such a big deal, here's a video from Techquickie about RCS and Google's version of it.

 

Sources

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/04/verizon-att-and-t-mobile-kill-their-cross-carrier-rcs-messaging-plans/

https://www.lightreading.com/ossbsscx/verizon-atandt-t-mobile-kill-rcs-plans/d/d-id/768729

[RejZoR]

Wasn't RCS suppose to be routed through Google entirely? Yeah, I'm glad it's dead. If it was some sort of open standard operated by everyone just like SMS I'd be sort of fine with it.

[LAwLz]

54 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Wasn't RCS suppose to be routed through Google entirely? Yeah, I'm glad it's dead. If it was some sort of open standard operated by everyone just like SMS I'd be sort of fine with it.

RCS did not require going through Google. The idea is that it goes through your carrier similarly to how sms and mms goes through your carrier. The problem is that barely any carriers have implemented it. 

 

Google added the option to use them as the overlay "carrier" in their messaging app for people on unsupported carriers. 

 

Also, it is an open standard. It's run by GSMA just like sms and mms. 

[NotTheFirstDaniel]

Not surprising. No carriers actually adopted it, they were too busy screaming "5G" down everyone's throats despite the technology not being ready for primetime at all.

 

If carriers en masse adopted it, Apple would have been forced to adopt it. The only issue is that Apple is usually the reason why a technology goes mainstream. Think of some idea that's been seen before, for instance the fingerprint sensor. Before the iPhone 5S, there were some mobile devices with biometric authentication, but after the 5S, you would be damned to find a flagship phone without it. Even the S5 had that clearly rushed fingerprint sensor to compete with the iPhone and other competitors. Had Apple adopted RCS, it would be everywhere by now, just like they did with 5G, but they obviously won't because of business decisions, so it never went anywhere. You could see this with all the other "gimmicks" (not referring to RCS as a gimmick though) that Apple never adopted. Pop-up cameras, dual screen displays, projectors in their phone, docking your phone to use as your PC. If Apple did it, it would be industry standard by now, but they didn't, so they're seen as gimmick one off features that are quickly forgotten about in the next generation.

 

Long live RCS, hopefully it can get mainstream enough when it eventually comes back under another name so that companies like Apple are forced to go with it.

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, NotTheFirstDaniel said:

Not surprising. No carriers actually adopted it, they were too busy screaming "5G" down everyone's throats despite the technology not being ready for primetime at all.

 

If carriers en masse adopted it, Apple would have been forced to adopt it. The only issue is that Apple is usually the reason why a technology goes mainstream. Think of some idea that's been seen before, for instance the fingerprint sensor. Before the iPhone 5S, there were some mobile devices with biometric authentication, but after the 5S, you would be damned to find a flagship phone without it. Even the S5 had that clearly rushed fingerprint sensor to compete with the iPhone and other competitors. Had Apple adopted RCS, it would be everywhere by now, just like they did with 5G, but they obviously won't because of business decisions, so it never went anywhere. You could see this with all the other "gimmicks" (not referring to RCS as a gimmick though) that Apple never adopted. Pop-up cameras, dual screen displays, projectors in their phone, docking your phone to use as your PC. If Apple did it, it would be industry standard by now, but they didn't, so they're seen as gimmick one off features that are quickly forgotten about in the next generation.

 

Long live RCS, hopefully it can get mainstream enough when it eventually comes back under another name so that companies like Apple are forced to go with it.

Unless RCS is redesigned to utilize end-to-end encryption, I will say wholeheartedly that nothing is missed. 

[Kisai]

23 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Unless RCS is redesigned to utilize end-to-end encryption, I will say wholeheartedly that nothing is missed. 

Pretty much.

 

Like any P2P messaging system is preferable to a centralized one, however even then (See Jabber) without some kind of centralized identity federated storage, there's no way to prevent spoofing which is is the present problem with SMS and phone calls.

 

What will end the existing POTS system won't be people all switching to wireless, but a unified service like Jabber replacing phone numbers with whitelisted (eg friends lists) contacts so that unverified and unexpected contacts will not be able to contact and spoof their identity in the first place.

 

Which to the point, the reason RCS failed, isn't on Apple, it's because carriers are to put it bluntly, stupid and greedy. They wanted to charge end users per message for multimedia stuff, like they had been doing with text messages and mms's before.

[Orcblood]

Everyone should just use the Signal app. 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Orcblood said:

Everyone should just use the Signal app. 

It is starting to become default.  I am in a science fiction book club that uses WhatsApp  and the group refuses to change platforms even though the new TOS for it effectively destroys its security.  I have yet to agree to the TOS so I suspect I will be forced out of the group when the switch is finally flipped.

[Orcblood]

18 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

It is starting to become default.  I am in a science fiction book club that uses WhatsApp  and the group refuses to change platforms even though the new TOS for it effectively destroys its security.  I have yet to agree to the TOS so I suspect I will be forced out of the group when the switch is finally flipped.

That triggers me. Is it I don't want to signup for a new app excuse? Or, and this may be a bit sexist is it the females in the group refusing to leave WhatsApp? Always seems harder with them.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Orcblood said:

That triggers me. Is it I don't want to signup for a new app excuse? Or, and this may be a bit sexist is it the females in the group refusing to leave WhatsApp? Always seems harder with them.

Interesting.  It’s possible.  I don’t know why it hasn’t changed.  I’m not smof in that one.  I wouldn’t have even downloaded WhatsApp in the first place except for that group.

[Commodus]

Some will blame Apple, but I think its lack of adoption isn't the main barrier.

 

Rather, it's that RCS just hasn't been very well-done. End-to-end encryption only recently came to the platform (and then it's not consistently available), so why would anyone privacy-conscious use it? Apple must've had nightmares of people mistaking RCS for iMessage and then suing when an eavesdropper grabs what the user thought was a secure conversation.

 

That and RCS has that classic design-by-committee stink to it. The carriers wanted to add their own touch to "differentiate" their services, but that just led to a fragmented system where networks have to negotiate interoperability... and of course, that takes ages. Never mind Apple — virtually any major messaging platform can move faster because it isn't waiting on business deals just to let you message friends who use a different provider.

 

Google's efforts help, but I can't help but think that the GSMA would need to be vicious to give RCS a fighting chance. Force one format on everyone and get them to promise adoption by a certain date. Enable encryption by default; make sure all the big OEMs' standard texting apps support it. And if Apple doesn't support it right away after these reforms, it might change its tune if it sees RCS taking off.