In a year, SMS can be replaced by RCS messages. How are they better?

Recently, the popularity of SMS messages has been falling catastrophically. What to do – the function of short text messages has been replaced by a more functional and convenient communication in messengers. But mobile operators from the United States do not want to give a substantial part of their income to messenger developers, so a new standard for text messages was recently announced. SMS will be replaced by RCS messages, which will open a new era in mobile communications.

The four largest mobile operators in the United States have joined forces to create a new standard for text messages RCS, which will soon replace the usual, but already unpopular, SMS messages. The Verge publication, which was the first to post information about the new standard, mentioned that in terms of their functionality, RCS messages are as close as possible to messages sent through popular messengers.

In order to take advantage of the new communication technology, smartphone users will have to download a special application. First, it is planned to release software for devices running on the Android platform, and then, after testing in real conditions, for other mobile operating systems.

RCS stands for Rich Communication Services or "advanced Communication Services". The technology appeared quite a long time ago – for the first time representatives of GSM company told about it back in 2012 at one of the conferences. The online protocol cannot be compared with SMS, since it not only provides the forwarding of text messages, but also makes it possible to send images and videos, and without loss of quality.

The new standard will allow you to create chats and make video calls, and most importantly – there will be no restrictions on the number of characters entered, like SMS messages. In addition, the sender can always find out whether a particular addressee is online, as well as whether he has read the message or not.

From the description of the capabilities of RCS, it becomes clear that it will be able to fully compete with the messengers used today by most owners of mobile devices. The standard will work not only within the country, but also when communicating with subscribers located abroad.

The Verge article states that the American operators AT &T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon agreed on the introduction of the novelty. Work has already begun on the messaging application, and mobile users will be able to send and receive the first RCS messages in the second half of 2020.

In order to implement the standard as quickly as possible, operators launched a joint CCMI (Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative) initiative. CCMI program manager Doug Garland said that starting next year, the program for the exchange of RCS messages will be installed on all smartphones sold by operators and their partners.

Unfortunately, the new messaging standard will make smartphone users more dependent on their devices, which is unlikely to be useful for them.