After years of carriers failing to agree on a common wealthy communications service, or RCS, textual content messaging commonplace that helps superior chat options between networks, Google says AT&T is on board to make use of its Jibe RCS platform.
Google Senior Vice President Hiroshi Lockheimer tweeted the information late Friday that AT&T’s default Android messaging will use Jibe “so their customers will get the newest RCS options immediately.”
Right this moment I am excited to share that we’re working with AT&T to speed up adoption of the RCS commonplace, and that AT&T’s default Android messaging will now be by way of the Jibe platform, so their customers will get the newest RCS options immediately.
— Hiroshi Lockheimer (@lockheimer) June 9, 2023
Not like SMS and MMS, which ship messages over mobile networks, the RCS commonplace makes use of information networks to ship lengthy messages, uncompressed photographs and enormous group chats and not using a hitch.
Apple’s iMessage and chat apps like WhatsApp and Fb Messenger already use information to get these options, but it surely’s been a battle to get these superior textual content options on primary messaging for Android units.
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When is RCS coming to cell units?
Although carriers had tried instituting their very own separate RCS requirements and assist wealthy textual content options on one another’s networks by way of a collaborative initiative in 2019, Google purchased the Jibe platform in the identical yr to begin its personal efforts at RCS multinetwork assist.
In 2020 for T-Cellular and by 2021 for AT&T and Verizon, all three main carriers agreed to have Google’s RCS-packing Messages app preloaded on telephones to offer customers entry to an app with wealthy texting options. Friday’s information means AT&T’s default messaging system will now use Jibe, nevertheless.
Google has been introducing extra RCS good texting options in its Messages app, like including emojis to replies, in efforts to catch as much as Apple’s iMessage. Regardless of jabs from Google, Apple has been in no rush to undertake the messaging commonplace — and at Vox Media’s Code Convention final yr, CEO Tim Prepare dinner even advised an attendee that if he wished to have seamless messaging when chatting with household, “purchase your mother an iPhone.”
Lockheimer additionally famous that at Google I/O 2023 final month, the corporate introduced that over 800 million folks at present use RCS, which it expects to develop to 1 billion customers by the top of 2023.
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