Why the Hype around RCS and Google Messages?

cb474

23Sha-ger I think this discussion is pointless and useless. Because in North America they use iMessage mainly, or RCS, nobody else does. Europe/Asia? Whatsapp, etc.
So the reason the only few carriers fully suppport it is..American ones. This is not a conspiracy, just an adaptation. You guys still use inches, 110V, etc.

RCS is an international standard created by GSMA, which is a global trade organization to represent all mobile carriers worldwide. In fact, it's based in London. RCS is the replacement for SMS. So whatever people would like to belive, RCS is coming for you. It's going to be deployed everywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services

You can see in the article in Wikipedia, that there are already carriers that have deployed RCS in India, Japan, Belgium, Canada, the UK, Malaysia, Japan, China, Greece, The Philippines, South Korea, Spain, Russia, Slovokia, Switzerland, Hungary, Romania, Mexico, Albania, Sweden, South Africa, Australia, and Norway.

That hardly suggests it's just a US thing.

There are also a lot of businesses and services that only send out messages via carrier based messaging, i.e. SMS and soon RCS. So the idea that people can fully escape this is false.

23Sha-ger

cb474
Not really my point. A "mile" is a standard measurement as well.
Yet it is only used in North America. RCS is not deployed (yet) around most carriers, with exception to UK and maybe AU.

cb474

23Sha-ger Huh? Did you read my post and the long list of countries that have carriers who have deployed RCS? It's way more than the UK and Austria.

In any case, the mile analogy makes no sense. In countries that use the metric system, that's what they use. In countries that use miles, that's what they use. There's no mixing and matching.

But as far as messaging platforms go: 1) There is a mish mosh of platforms used everywhere. There are no countries where everyone only uses one platform an no others. 2) The only standard universal messaging system that works on all phones is SMS, which will eventually be replaced by RCS globally. Some things (like certain businesses) depend on these systems. And no matter how popular Whatsapp or Signal or whatever becomes, third party, private platforms will never fully replace carrier based messaging. We will all, to some degree, always be dependent on carrier based messaging. So everyone is eventually going to have to deal with RCS, like it or not.

23Sha-ger

cb474
AU is Australia, not Austria.
Add New Zealand to your RCS list while we speak.
Countries with a majority of iOS users, which are currently, US/CA/UK/AU/NZ will have more incentives to make RCS available. This doesn't include the rest of the world.

cb474 We will all, to some degree, always be dependent on carrier based messaging. So everyone is eventually going to have to deal with RCS, like it or not.

Just like we all "adopted" IPv6? No matter how loud voices parrot it for like, 20 years?

cb474

23Sha-ger Countries with a majority of iOS users, which are currently, US/CA/UK/AU/NZ will have more incentives to make RCS available. This doesn't include the rest of the world.

Apple dragged its feet for years on RCS. That makes zero sense. It was Google that aggressively pushed RCS. In fact, countries that have mostly Android users (most of the world other than the US) have more of an incentive for RCS, because then Android will have a default messaging system that works more like modern messaging apps.

Also RCS has no obvious benefits for Apple users. Most Apple users are just using iMessage with other Apple users and already get all the benefits that something like RCS offers. They just view all this as weird Android stuff and don't understand why people don't just use iPhones. So the idea that Apple is driving the push for RCS is the complete opposite of reality.

What's more, it was European regulatory oversight that pushed Apple to stop resisting RCS and adopt it: https://www.ccsinsight.com/blog/apple-embraces-rcs-the-devil-is-in-the-detail-and-the-reason-is-the-dma/

Anyway, believe what you want. RCS is coming.

gk7ncklxlts99w1 'm glad this forum is not beholden to the US defaultism of Reddit, where if you start any sentence with "The US is the only country that..." you'll immediately be downvoted to hell for recognising the existence of the rest of the world.

What I see is a couple people in this thread who have appointed themselves the representatives of the rest of the world. But wherever these posters live is also just their particular experience that they are generalizing from. As others in this thread have noted in Norway and elsewhere SMS is widely used. There is not some neat divide between the US and "the rest of the world." There is just the world. Plus, these posters, apparently from outside the US, seem to think they know how the US is, better than those who live in the US.

gk7ncklxlts99w1

n3t_admin I'm glad this forum is not beholden to the US defaultism of Reddit, where if you start any sentence with "The US is the only country that..." you'll immediately be downvoted to hell for recognising the existence of the rest of the world.

gk7ncklxlts99w1

cb474 I think Americans believe there is a neat divide between the US and the rest of the world, a kind of egotistic patriotism that I don't think any country in the world shares. Where I'm from, we don't assume all of our readers / viewers / users / customers are from our country, we expect them to come from anywhere in the world.

This is properly off topic though and kind of a personal gripe of mine, so I'll just leave it at that.

GrouchyGrape

gk7ncklxlts99w1 have you ever visited America and spent time with its citizens? And other countries than your own? Or simply what you get from online/media

GrouchyGrape

mmmm you obviously don't understand infrastructure and the nature of human adoption of technologies. One day working in government, medical field, etc and you'll see how long people will hold on to old technologies because they "just work" and "that's how we've always done it".

WitteShadovv

Can we please try to stay on topic and try to avoid a culture war between countries that use iMessage/RCS/SMS and thr rest of the world? Discussions like this won't really change anything.

deplored

HomerJay
What I really want to know is when is there going to be a FOSS messaging app that supports RCS? I will never use Google Messages and as others noted here, trying to get Apple users or any normies really to use Signal is an excercise in futility.

GoS_anonuser1

deplored RCS usage requires a RCS server that your RCS app handshakes with and sends the messages through it. In many countries operators do not offer RCS servers anymore, and you can't easily use RCS servers of other telco operators from other countries. What's left? Google RCS servers.

Either way, unless you live in a country in which the telco you use offers its own RCS servers, you have to back to google if you use RCS.

That's why I don't use RCS at all. That's just my personal choice.

SMS is "good enough" for basic non-privacy requiring daily things, because it is universal. Everybody with a phone has it, all the way down from old 1991 Nokia GSM phones to the latest iPhones and Androids. It is universal. it "just works". Sure no encryption to speak of, vulnerable to MITM attacks, operators store you SMS messages for 6-9 months (depending on jurisdiction), yadda yadda, etc. But for non-critical stuff, it just works.

Then pick your favourite E2EE messenger for everything else, based on your needs.

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