Main points
- Verizon’s adoption of Google Jibe servers marks a major step toward unifying carrier-based messaging services through RCS.
- Google has been working hard behind the scenes to dominate the RCS narrative and bring iMessage-like functionality to Android users.
- Apple expects to adopt RCS in iMessage by 2024, raising hope for a universal messaging experience, but will need to make a decision on encryption protocols.
Another win for Google and its movement to unify carrier-based messaging services with rich communications services. Verizon announced that it will begin using Google’s Jibe servers to deliver RCS messaging to its consumer and business customers. This is a big move compared to Apple’s expected adoption of RCS in iMessage on its iPhones and various devices – and that’s what it’s all about.
What is RCS messaging? Will it become truly widespread?
Apple has confirmed that it will support RCS in 2024, which could lead to a universal messaging experience.
RCS and the Big Three
The move ends a long-running experiment by the U.S. wireless industry involving the deployment and implementation of RCS across carriers and even phone brands. The GSM Association, which guides global industry standards, began developing RCS standards in 2008, but did not release a common configuration file until 2016.
T-Mobile was the first to jump ahead, offering RCS to its customers in 2015. AT&T and Verizon followed suit soon after. What followed was a long period of growing pains, as each carrier’s implementation wasn’t cross-compatible with the others for some time.
While Android phone users mostly text each other via SMS and MMS, iPhone users have been sending stickers, tracking read receipts, and bullying “green bubbles.”
Things are starting to look up after the major US carriers’ silent efforts to unify RCS implementation across their respective systems failed (via Android Police ).
Google has been working hard behind the scenes to dominate the narrative about RCS. After all, RCS will give Android users many of the same great iMessage features they desperately need. The company acquired Jibe Mobile, a potential RCS server provider, in 2015. The company subsequently announced plans to implement RCS among Android users in 2016 by routing messages sent via its Android Messages app (later Google Messages) through its Jibe servers. More rapid moves in the coming years will allow customers to start using RCS without having to rely on anything the carriers are doing.
Long story short, operators started giving up. In June 2023, AT&T said it would migrate its entire RCS business to Google’s Jibe servers. T-Mobile did the same thing in September. Today, Verizon announced it is bringing a large number of customers to Jibe RCS.
Of course, most, if not most, Android users already use RCS via Google Messages anyway, but for the few who use Verizon’s proprietary implementation via the Samsung Messages app, that means almost no one on mainstream US carriers. All RCS traffic is going through Google.
RCS and Apple
Since Google has pretty much nailed down carriers when it comes to RCS adoption, the company doesn’t have anything to worry about as it prepares for a big change. The company has been running a marketing campaign for years to try to convince Apple to adopt RCS so that iPhone users communicating with Android users (and vice versa) can use the same advanced features as they do when talking in their own groups via iMessage. Or RCS. Importantly, it will also be a more secure fallback than SMS if iPhone customers interact with automated text services.
To advance the EU’s review of its Digital Markets Act – which would force designated popular “core services,” and possibly even proprietary ones like iMessage, to be available on all relevant platforms – Apple announced late last year that it would Will be at the end of 2024.
The company said it will work with the GSMA to advocate for the inclusion of end-to-end encryption in the common profile standard. As this Reddit post brought to our attention, Google has been using the facilities of Universal Profiles to implement end-to-end encryption, but using the Signal protocol, which is also used by the Signal messaging app. If Apple urges GSMA stakeholders to integrate encryption into RCS, they may need to agree on whether to retain the current implementation of the common profile or adopt a different profile (which may include a different encryption protocol), among a host of other issues.
Hopefully these decisions will be made soon so that Apple can incorporate RCS support into this year’s iOS updates, and Google can update its implementation of Universal Profiles so that every capable Android phone can send and receive encrypted RCS messages to Whichever way Apple is willing to accept it.
Not to be too optimistic, but if everything goes as expected, we’ll all be responding to high-resolution video footage sent via RCS, encrypted by default, regardless of whether we’re streaming from an Android device or an iPhone. Verizon’s news is just one small step in a giant leap forward for the telecom industry.