It has been touted as the next big thing in the telecom world to connect the four billion strong telco user-community and provide them with an interoperable, rich media sharing experience. It has been termed a catalyst for “turning IMS based communication into a market opportunity." It enjoys the support of more than eighty leading companies, including 28 of the world’s largest operators who represent 1.7 billion connected users. At the same time, the acronym “RCS” has also been termed “Really Considered Significantly Obsolete”2 even before the RCS experiences have hit the mainstream commercial market. So what are the facts? Whose story do we believe? Depending on who you talk to, the answer may be different. In this short paper, we attempt to capture the strong points, as well as some of the weaknesses within this rather large industry initiative, and suggest ways in which the challenges could be addressed.

What Is RCS?

GSM Association’s website3 is a great place to get a quick introduction to RCS, if you are not already familiar with the initiative. In brief, RCS is a service vision that leverages existing successful mobile community experiences and enriches them in the following way: a. Building a community around the phonebook by adding presence and availability indicators to the address book, b. Enriching the messaging experience by adding chat, conversation histories and multimedia transfer between users c. Enriching the basic voice call by adding rich media sharing capabilities Deliver the above concepts together on one device, make them work in an integrated manner across operator and country boundaries, and you get RCS. In short, RCS is a set of interoperable, enriched communication experiences.

The Opportunity

A Relevant Problem