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The most worrying thing is Jibe (which is the backbone of RCS in some carriers), because unless Google has somehow good plans to transfer or maintain Jibe, it w

The most worrying thing is Jibe (which is the backbone of RCS in some carriers), because unless Google has somehow good plans to transfer or maintain Jibe, it will kill RCS with it. It seems that Google "Chat" is trying to turn RCS into a Google-controlled ship, and I'm worried that will entrench rather than replace SMS because it will be more reliable looking at bigger timescales than Google's messaging mess is. Edit: SMS isn't even (fully) defined in 5GNR standards, so if RCS broke it's worse than useless.

toast0 5y ago
I used to work at WhatsApp, so I'm probably biased, but I just don't see how anybody is excited about RCS. RCS is brought to you by the carriers that can't make SMS work reliably and made MMS work even worse. The only way it's gotten any traction is because Google decided to just declare itself as the backing server by force. But as you said, how long can we expect Google to run it? And, what does it give us? Another messaging service that I have to see if someone is on before I message them? But with easier authentication, I guess. And, since it's carrier based and maybe? falls back to SMS, I assume I could get billed for messages (especially international messages). Yay, I guess? Supposedly RCS has an E2E spec now, but given how long it has taken to roll out how minimally it has, I would expect the E2E rollout to take even longer. Again, I'm biased, but E2E is kind of a basic requirement of personal messaging at this point.
- s17n 5y ago
  Right now most of my messaging is on SMS/MMS, so if RCS makes it less terrible, that would be exciting. Obviously if you have to check to see if somebody is on it that's a nonstarter but I assume it'll fall back to SMS/MMS, like iMessage does.
guitarbill 5y ago
Would it be a bad thing if RCS didn't happen? It seems like a last-ditch effort for carriers to try and attempt to claw back some of the control they've lost. Now, I'm no fan of having dozens of messaging apps, but carriers being involved again - is that better? And also, is the RCS spec even sane? Can I use it on desktops and laptops? TCP/IP is one of the best things we still have.
- easton 5y ago
  It's better than SMS, as you can push larger pictures and things over it. And since in the US we're stuck with SMS...
- markmark 5y ago
  It's nice to have a messaging option that isn't owned by a single company. Of course it will never succeed because Apple will never support it.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    But is RCS even technically that ("not owned by a single company") with Google's weird run around to also own most of the backend services? Standards are great, but fiefdom attempts pretending to be standards not so much. Nothing about RCS' architecture really sells that it is a better standard (or really much of a standard at all) compared to XMPP or Matrix (or IRC for that matter) especially when the vast part of the data plane is so complex there's only ever really been one vendor (Vibe/Google).

toast0 5y ago

I used to work at WhatsApp, so I'm probably biased, but I just don't see how anybody is excited about RCS. RCS is brought to you by the carriers that can't make SMS work reliably and made MMS work even worse. The only way it's gotten any traction is because Google decided to just declare itself as the backing server by force. But as you said, how long can we expect Google to run it? And, what does it give us? Another messaging service that I have to see if someone is on before I message them? But with easier authentication, I guess. And, since it's carrier based and maybe? falls back to SMS, I assume I could get billed for messages (especially international messages). Yay, I guess? Supposedly RCS has an E2E spec now, but given how long it has taken to roll out how minimally it has, I would expect the E2E rollout to take even longer. Again, I'm biased, but E2E is kind of a basic requirement of personal messaging at this point.

s17n 5y ago
Right now most of my messaging is on SMS/MMS, so if RCS makes it less terrible, that would be exciting. Obviously if you have to check to see if somebody is on it that's a nonstarter but I assume it'll fall back to SMS/MMS, like iMessage does.

guitarbill 5y ago

Would it be a bad thing if RCS didn't happen? It seems like a last-ditch effort for carriers to try and attempt to claw back some of the control they've lost. Now, I'm no fan of having dozens of messaging apps, but carriers being involved again - is that better? And also, is the RCS spec even sane? Can I use it on desktops and laptops? TCP/IP is one of the best things we still have.

easton 5y ago
It's better than SMS, as you can push larger pictures and things over it. And since in the US we're stuck with SMS...
markmark 5y ago
It's nice to have a messaging option that isn't owned by a single company. Of course it will never succeed because Apple will never support it.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  But is RCS even technically that ("not owned by a single company") with Google's weird run around to also own most of the backend services? Standards are great, but fiefdom attempts pretending to be standards not so much. Nothing about RCS' architecture really sells that it is a better standard (or really much of a standard at all) compared to XMPP or Matrix (or IRC for that matter) especially when the vast part of the data plane is so complex there's only ever really been one vendor (Vibe/Google).