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I hope Apple never adopts RCS

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Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#4

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

The SMS/RCS/iMessage/blue bubble-green bubble debate is almost entirely exclusive to the strange market of the US.

Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc.

EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't have one right now, and all three (SMS, RCS, iMessage) are poor stop-gaps. People need to send their texts, images, videos, and files to people without pain; that's all the average layperson cares about. What does fill this need are said 3rd-party apps, which claim to have E2EE messaging. Whether this is really true remains to be seen.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#5

Post by threeseed »

I hope there is an interoperable standard but it needs to be (a) end to end encrypted and (b) controlled by some standards organisation. RCS is neither.

And worst of all Google implemented encryption by layering it on top i.e. creating their own proprietary version.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#6

Post by daneel_w »

We initially tried getting on-board the RCS train about 3 or 4 years ago, to be able to do "rich content delivery" to customers. Specifications and feature-sets were hazy and seemed to be poorly agreed upon, and service providers offering RCS termination to the mobile grid were few. Besides only Android having support for it, it turned out that in all of Europe we found just 4 cellular operators that supported it. Consequently the reach of RCS was extremely limited, so we abandoned the idea.

In the beginning of this year we had another look at the situation, and somewhat surprisingly there has been very little progress in terms of operator support. As we would say in Sweden: it appears to be moving slower than a snail on vacation.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#8

Post by elashri »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #4

The SMS/RCS/iMessage/blue bubble-green bubble debate is almost entirely exclusive to the strange market of the US. Almost everywhere else in the world, users have simply adopted a variety of 3rd-party messaging apps that use the phone's Internet rather than GSM connection, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, Signal, WeChat, etc. EDIT: While I understand the need for a 'universal E2EE messaging standard', we don't hav…

Part of reason in for many places outside US. There are no unlimited messages plan.

edit: people seems to miss that I said that this is only part of the reason not the reason. I also said many places outside the US (not all). So do people down vote because they think that there are only US and EU in the world? I am missing that point.

Re: I hope Apple never adopts RCS

#10

Post by capableweb »

nikanj wrote: post #3

iMessages are tied to Apple serial numbers, making spamming a lot harder. RCS would bring the spam protection to sms levels, i.e. absolutely non-existant

SMS spam can be solved on the operator level instead of forcing devices/software to protect against it. Just because your country has poor telecom operators doesn't mean that applies to the rest of the world. My main phone number is a western Europe number that is added to all my outgoing emails + visible on my public website (and lots of other places) and I almost never receive spam SMSes. Last one was pretty much exactly one year ago.
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