As someone who works in the telco industry and spent a lot of time dealing with SMS and MMS, I actually find RCS to be almost as klunky. But as an European whos

As someone who works in the telco industry and spent a lot of time dealing with SMS and MMS, I actually find RCS to be almost as klunky. But as an European whose family and friends mostly use WhatsApp (and occasionally Signal), I think it’s time is past. Sure, Google would (assuming they’re finally settling their messaging strategy) very much like to have full parity with iMessage, and they have been feeding carriers the notion that they might even get some extra revenue out of it, but for most Android users, even SMS doesn’t matter anymore. A note on the carrier angle: if you have an iPhone and a flat data plan, iMessage can’t be billed. But if you have to have an RCS gateway, then you can bill on a per-message basis again, even if SMS pricing (at least en Europe) has gone sub-cent. That is what Google has been trying to lobby on, regardless of their outspoken stance on interoperability…