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In practice RCS is entirely run by Google outside China, the path to federation was killed around 2019 when Google decided every MNO should eventually move to J

In practice RCS is entirely run by Google outside China, the path to federation was killed around 2019 when Google decided every MNO should eventually move to Jibe if they wanted access to a global interconnected RCS, same on the client side. I don't think it's too late as iOS finally supports RCS. But so far Google hasn't shown willingness to let unsanctioned clients connect to Jibe.

averageRoyalty 1y ago
What? In practice, RCS is run by carriers in most of the world. They connect to hubs, the same way SMS hubs work and also have Universal Profiles. Jibe is not small, but it hardly runs the worlds RCS. Maybe you're conflating the US with the world?
- hocuspocus 1y ago
  Jibe is the only RCS backend in 180+ countries. The few MNOs that had deployed third party solutions (mostly from Mavenir and WIT) eventually killed them off once Google made clear they weren't interested in a federated network anymore. The US was actually the only market where a federated RCS was tried at scale for a few years (the CCMI) but all carriers eventually gave in as the UX was poor and unreliable. To my knowledge there are only two other non-Jibe RCS "islands": China (that runs RCS solutions from national providers like ZTE) and +Message in Japan. +Message is on its way out, as carriers are now pushing subscribers to Google Messages and Jibe, anticipating the iOS support. And Apple is in on it: MNOs don't have a choice here, they now need formal agreements with Google (Jibe is paid through RBM revenue share) and IMS configuration and (de)provisioning workflows that are sanctioned by Apple and de facto tested only against Jibe. Apple's communication around E2EE in UP 3.0 is also directly following Google's work on replacing their ad-hoc Signal implementation by MLS.
NoGravitas 1y ago
And even within the Google ecosystem, RCS access can be iffy. It was working fine on my Pixel for months, then switched its status to "Setting up..." and hasn't worked for months since then, despite me trying All The Things suggested on various fora short of factory resetting my phone.

averageRoyalty 1y ago

What? In practice, RCS is run by carriers in most of the world. They connect to hubs, the same way SMS hubs work and also have Universal Profiles. Jibe is not small, but it hardly runs the worlds RCS. Maybe you're conflating the US with the world?

hocuspocus 1y ago
Jibe is the only RCS backend in 180+ countries. The few MNOs that had deployed third party solutions (mostly from Mavenir and WIT) eventually killed them off once Google made clear they weren't interested in a federated network anymore. The US was actually the only market where a federated RCS was tried at scale for a few years (the CCMI) but all carriers eventually gave in as the UX was poor and unreliable. To my knowledge there are only two other non-Jibe RCS "islands": China (that runs RCS solutions from national providers like ZTE) and +Message in Japan. +Message is on its way out, as carriers are now pushing subscribers to Google Messages and Jibe, anticipating the iOS support. And Apple is in on it: MNOs don't have a choice here, they now need formal agreements with Google (Jibe is paid through RBM revenue share) and IMS configuration and (de)provisioning workflows that are sanctioned by Apple and de facto tested only against Jibe. Apple's communication around E2EE in UP 3.0 is also directly following Google's work on replacing their ad-hoc Signal implementation by MLS.

NoGravitas 1y ago

And even within the Google ecosystem, RCS access can be iffy. It was working fine on my Pixel for months, then switched its status to "Setting up..." and hasn't worked for months since then, despite me trying All The Things suggested on various fora short of factory resetting my phone.