The four major American mobile carriers have simultaneously announced their joint support for RCS messaging, hopefully increasing the chance that RCS will be supported by more major carriers internationally.
The American mobile phone carriers hope that their new Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) will help drive the next generation of messaging for consumers and businesses.
The CCMI service is based on GSMA’s Rich Communications Service (RCS) industry standard, so it should be interoperable with the global “Universal Profile” standard for RCS that has been adopted by mobile carriers internationally, such as our own Telstra.
American consumers users who buy Android phones from the 4 main mobile carriers will likely have the CCMI messaging app installed as their default RCS messaging app.
This will allow the four American mobile carriers to figure out ways to make more revenue from RCS, which wouldn’t have happened if they had just adopted the Google Messages RCS app as the default on their Android phones.
Interestingly the main fan of RCS to date Google was not mentioned in the carrier press release at all.
However Sanaz Ahari Lemelson, the product director responsible for Android Messages has since commented on the news:
We remain committed to working with the Android ecosystem to further enhance the messaging experience on Android with RCS. It’s great to see U.S. carriers getting behind RCS in a meaningful way and we look forward to continuing to work with them to bring modern messaging to everyone on Android.
On the topic of RCS, the Pixel 4 doesn’t seem to support it on SIM 2 (i.e. the eSIM when in dual SIM mode). Was working fine (on Telstra) until I put a 2nd physical SIM into the phone, which shifts the eSIM from SIM 1 to SIM 2. Even after taking the physical SIM out. Now Messages says the phone doesn’t support Chat when just using an eSIM as it stays as SIM 2 😔
What I find interesting isn’t that RCS doesn’t work.. but that Telstra supports eSIM on P4. That’s cool!