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RCS for Business

developers.google.com

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Re: RCS for Business

#11

Post by enginous »

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions.

Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie. you can't add a "Text us" button that will take you to this experience. (But you could capture a phone number, and text them _iff_ they have RCS available and enabled.)

Overall, seems questionable whether this is worth integrating if the experience is so fractured across platforms and many people might not even have RCS. The concept of a platform for rich messaging across platforms sounds good though.

Re: RCS for Business

#12

Post by jeroenhd »

enginous wrote: post #11

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie…

I have never seen any of this in real life.

However, all of this is in the RCS spec. If Apple implements the RCS spec beyond the bare basics, all of this should Just Work.

RCS is much more than just "SMS but via weird HTTP" and things like chatbots and interactive components were one of the selling points towards ISPs to bother supporting it.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to bother dealing with the standard. Now Google is at it again, selling "RCS for business" when the RCS standard itself is supposed to be used in a federated, carrier-to-carrier fashion just like SMS.

Re: RCS for Business

#13

Post by x0x0 »

enginous wrote: post #11

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie…

What I think this is: as a reward to themselves for not stopping the tidal wave of fraud and phishing distributed via sms, they're going to charge businesses to message you in verifiable manner. So when your bank, ups/fedex for package delivery, walgreens/cvs for prescriptions, etc want to contact you google is going to charge.

As a reward for helping make sms untrustworthy, they're going to tax trustworthy communications.

Re: RCS for Business

#15

Post by zinekeller »

ianburrell wrote: post #9
gruez wrote: post #4

So is RCS a Google platform, like how iMessage is an Apple platform? It might theoretically be a GSMA standard, but from their marketing page and how it's implemented in reality, it seems like it's the former.

RCS is a standard, but it needs hosted services for providers. Providers can either host themselves, or contract with someone like Google Jibe Cloud. Also, Google provides services for Android for providers that don't have it. iPhone depends on the provider so has less coverage.

> Providers can either host themselves

Outside of China, it is de facto a Google thing due to Jibe not really in mood to interconnect with others, plus the fact that Google actually shoehorns RCS in countries where they think they can get away with it. Your statement "iPhone depends on the provider so has less coverage" basically bares this one. Two example:

1. Japan has already a different provider-supported thing +Message, (RCS-based but a different flavor because RCS is complicated), but Google is trying to win to them (and if I remember correctly, au actually jumped ship to Jibe recently-ish).

2. African carriers were confused because of RCS shoehorning without the carrier's consent: SMS reliably actually decreased because Google assumes that once you got an Android phone, surely you won't temporarily use that SIM on a "basic" phone for just an hour or two, right? Google just assumes that's offline, but for people still using their Android devices to reach their family on a farm who temporarily switched to a basic phone for its reliability and reach, their messages will still be send solely via RCS (which predictably won't reach the intended recipient because, of course, it does not have RCS).

Apple of course has its incentive to keep its users on iMessage, but it now accepts RCS (whether Jibe or not) and being "patchy" means that there are many, many carriers which did not implement RCS on their volition. I just imagine how would Google handle an oppressive government's request for interception on Jibe after carriers demonstrably shown that RCS was implemented without their consent, with fines and possibly prison sentences for illegally operating a carrier service to boot.

Re: RCS for Business

#16

Post by ComputerGuru »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12
enginous wrote: post #11

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie…

I have never seen any of this in real life. However, all of this is in the RCS spec. If Apple implements the RCS spec beyond the bare basics, all of this should Just Work. RCS is much more than just "SMS but via weird HTTP" and things like chatbots and interactive components were one of the selling points towards ISPs to bother supporting it. Unfortunately, nobody seems to bother dealing with the standard. Now Google…

I have, on my iPhone, RCS messages from businesses that don’t show up as a green bubble, have (somewhat) interactive components, and exhibit non-standard (also non-intuitive) behavior I didn’t expect of either an RCS or an iMessage.

So I guess they did implement all that.

(Not that they are particularly nicely implemented - the layout and padding is all wrong, alignment is off, and it looks distinctly non-native… but that’s par for the course on iOS 26.)

Re: RCS for Business

#18

Post by jeroenhd »

dfajgljsldkjag wrote: post #7

It's unfortunate that RCS is basically a de-facto Google walled garden in most countries. On android you can only use RCS in the Google Messages app and trying to build your own is explicitly blocked. [1] And of course the bonus that rooted devices are banned from RCS. All the propaganda Google spread to get Apple onboard (only with Google's blessing of course, Google could kick apple off if they wanted) was such a b…

> trying to build your own is explicitly blocked

Google doesn't offer an RCS API, but making your own API is not blocked, especially not on phones running MicroG.

For standard ROMs, RCS apps are not feasible because carriers expect interaction with the SIM module, and only privileged apps can do that. Google Messages blocks root access (probably because the RCS spec says they have to if they ever implement the money exchange feature for RCS) but that just locks out Google Messages.

LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/, and all the others could build their own RCS client. They may not be able to register with Google, but they can make an RCS app nonetheless. Rooted devices can also promote third party RCS apps to gain system permissions, so they would be able to use the same RCS apps. Thing is, like all telco protocols, RCS is a long spec with a billion features and acronyms made up of acronyms of even more acronyms, plus you can't easily set up your own server (though in theory a sister project for an open RCS server might be useful for the open 5G project).

I get why people want Google to just stuff their RCS library into open source Android the same way they do SMS/MMS, but to say it's impossible to write a client for, especially when running at the permission level MicroG runs at, is not the whole truth.

As for the whole "Google is the gatekeeper" thing: there are more RCS-for-business providers out there. Google's is probably the easiest to use by far, but Twilio has RCS too, as well as smaller companies such as LINK Mobility and Esendex. Sure, the people whose carriers don't support RCS might receive these business messages through Google's servers, but there's no need to pay Google a dime to make use of the RCS for Business specs.

Re: RCS for Business

#19

Post by rkrueger11 »

trollbridge wrote: post #14

RCS is basically spam-only messaging at this point. You can enhance your messaging experience by just turning it off.

I get vastly less spam on RCS than I do on SMS or iMessage.

The main thing Apple/Google needs to fix is RCS group messaging where spammers change the name of the group message to "Apple" or the business they're trying to impersonate.

Re: RCS for Business

#20

Post by enginous »

jeroenhd wrote: post #12
enginous wrote: post #11

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions. Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie…

I have never seen any of this in real life. However, all of this is in the RCS spec. If Apple implements the RCS spec beyond the bare basics, all of this should Just Work. RCS is much more than just "SMS but via weird HTTP" and things like chatbots and interactive components were one of the selling points towards ISPs to bother supporting it. Unfortunately, nobody seems to bother dealing with the standard. Now Google…

I did just manage to dig up a source that says these things are somewhat implemented in iOS 18 with illustrative screenshots rather than actuals, and it seems to be implemented but currently janky:

- On iOS, rich cards have a message length limit of 144 characters. (Implies this is not a limitation on Android.)

- On iOS, multi-CTA might fold some of the options away. So you might give 4 options and it renders 2 options and makes you use a drop-down for the others.

- On iOS, carousels display as cards, which might not be as obvious to interact with.

https://www.infobip.com/blog/apple-rcs

Potentially improved in iOS 26. It's a little hard to work out the state of this, and of course not trivial to test without joining some kind of partner ecosystem.

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