Recently released news headline, could hardly leave any of us indifferent, because we all own mobile devices that support these same SMS messages.
Obviously, we are talking about the introduction of a new (in fact, a well-forgotten old) RCS platform, no one is going to completely eliminate the good old SMS, at least for now. But what's the point? The wrapper, from four telecom operators, is very colorful - the convenience of using a universal platform that has a very "rich" functionality. But what is hidden inside this corporate "gift" to the suffering masses? Where did this RCS come from, and why should it replace SMS at all? Who, in 2019, needs another messenger that can impress with functionality only against the backdrop of SMS capabilities, but obviously not in comparison with its direct competitors iMessage, WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram? Evil tongues talk about the desire to take revenge, mercantile mobile operators, free social networks, and as a result of the reincarnation of the stillborn RCS. At the moment there are more questions than answers, but we will shed some light on some of them ...
SMS is a trailblazer
SMS (Short Message Service) - appeared back in 1992, and quickly fell in love with everyone. If for an ordinary user the functionality of the new service was in the first place - the ability to send a text, in one package up to 140 bytes (a message of 160 characters in Latin, or 70 in Cyrillic), then the operators also received a high profitability of the service, because the actual costs of forwarding such an insignificant amount of data, in all years, more than overlapped . Another obvious advantage of the technology was the fact that short text messages were sent via a separate communication channel, thereby not loading the voice channel, making it possible to receive SMS while talking on the phone. However, the end of this idyll was not far off.
A combination of such factors as: the development of network infrastructure, the introduction of high-speed data transfer technologies, the increased performance of gadgets, the introduction of more advanced software did not allow the situation to remain the same.
If, in the early 2000s, an attempt to introduce the first Jimm messenger (an abbreviation for Java Instant Mobile Messenger) on smartphones was not crowned with mass character, then by the end of the decade the technology had gone beyond the narrow circles of advanced youth. To our time, the practice of using applications with unlimited sending of text, sound and video messages over the Internet, without exaggeration, has become ubiquitous. Now, for the vast majority of smartphone holders, SMS has become an anachronism. In fact, being now a trouble-free, with minimal network requirements, a tool for sending text messages - SMS has become akin to a wired radio. Yes, we know where the socket is for it, and yes, we even regularly pay its functioning in the bills, although we forgot when we last used it for its intended purpose.
RCS - better late than never?
There are things in this world that, before their appearance, are already sharpened for negativity. By itself, the harmless and unremarkable RCS (Rich Communication Services) is just such a phenomenon.
The first bad "bells" for mobile operators began to sound at the turn of the millennium, the name of these problems is messengers. Yes, of course, at the beginning of the XNUMXst century, in order to send a message to your addressee, bypassing SMS, you needed a full-fledged workplace - a PC with an Internet connection, which in itself was burdensome. A little more headache for mobile operators was delivered by small companies providing IP-telephony services, which made it possible to communicate through the network with rates much more acceptable than those of mobile operators, especially when one of the interlocutors was roaming.
The growth in the volume of mobile Internet traffic was due, first of all, to technological progress, which tirelessly reduced the price per megabyte and expanded the coverage areas of 2-3G networks. Introduced in 2004, the Jimm mobile app essentially made it possible to organize a live chat on the phone. In fact, the messenger did not have any special bonuses, in comparison with the then usual e-mail. Skype had bonuses. Although that one
Skype was still far from a separate client on a smartphone, the consumer began to increasingly “run away” from classic services, cellular operators, via the mobile Internet.
Having in 2001 monochrome, but with support for the modem function, Motorola Timeport T260, a separately purchased cable for it (the phone also had an infrared port) and the most standard software on your computer, even then you could establish a communication process through the same ICQ client. At the first stages, the speed of connecting to the network, with a stable 2G coverage, could be up to 5 Kb / s, but this was enough for text correspondence. The time of the mindless monopoly of telecom operators on the entire range of communication services was fading into oblivion.
If the news about the mass introduction of RCS, to replace the obsolete SMS, would have been announced in the second half of the 2000s, it could have been a really bright event, but too much water has flowed under the bridge since then. In 2008, Skype made a real revolution - by offering free access to the Skype lite mobile application, designed for gadgets running the most popular among smartphones, OS Symbian.
Unlike its predecessor in 2004, Jimm, in 2008 Skype was far from a bunch of unmercenary amateurs who, in their free time from work, are trying to make the world a better place. By the time Skype fully entered the mobile application market, it had impressive material resources, hundreds of employees around the world, many years of experience in supporting the communication service, and, of course, a huge number of satisfied users.
In fact, what the aforementioned four mobile operators have now come to the consumer with has already been implemented ten years ago! Just think about it , RCS technology supports: emoji, changeable statuses, group chats, file transfer, IP telephony, video call and even, after an update in 2017, offline SMS notifications. But as for end-to-end encryption, which is present in all popular instant messengers, the “rich communication system” is still missing. The RCS protocol itself uses standard digital data transmission channels and in the absence of an Internet connection, almost all RCS functionality, like most other modern instant messengers, will go out.
Ordinary greed
The year 2008 was in many ways a landmark for RCS. Apparently, the release of a mobile application from Skype has become a turning point in the understanding of large cellular operators, than this is fraught with their multi-billion dollar business. Since then, a wave of initiatives has begun, as well as that were aimed at . Among the most outstanding proposals are the attempts of companies , generated by messengers.
There was also a more sane passage of the decision, by telecom operators, of the impending "trouble". If a movement cannot be overcome, it must be led. It is this motto, apparently, that corporations were guided by generating RCS. The GSM Association (Groupe Spécial Mobile), founded back in 1995, and numbering about 1100 mobile operators worldwide, announced in 2008 the creation and subsequent implementation of RCS. For more than 10 years, the platform developers have done a lot of work. Every year, until very recently, updates were regularly released for the communication platform, thereby keeping its technical relevance “afloat”. Also, the marketers of the project, all this time, did not let us forget about it. From time to time, headlines about the introduction, the beginning of support, RCS . However, we still do not see a successful messenger based on RCS.
An interesting step in trying to bury SMS was the accession to the development of a universal message sending protocol by Google Corporation. Having swallowed up with its brainchild -OS Android, 3/4 of the market for installed operating systems on smartphones, the corporation, as it is not funny, has not yet acquired its own modern mobile application for communication. Google is a high-tech and multifaceted company that has a number of integrated services for establishing communication, at the same time, a single, multifunctional platform, like iMessage, their main competitor, Apple, still does not have.
Having joined the development and integration of the RCS protocol into its operating system, the development of the Chat application based on it, Google faced a number of problems that significantly delayed the implementation of a competitive application. There are also marketing issues here.
Oddly enough, not all mobile operators were interested in RCS. For small operators, the implementation of such a complex set of tasks to unify a software product with a diverse subscriber base is a matter of guaranteed, significant material costs, with not fully understood benefits from its introduction. Now, as before, Apple is not going to just give up iMessage, and the new platform, whatever one may say, will still not become truly universal. It has long been clear that customers' need for strong message encryption, an RCS-based messenger, would not be supported by a huge number of mobile operators. Operators are very sensitive to national legislation, and always cooperate with the law enforcement agencies of the countries in which they are represented, and they do not really need additional problems with the introduction of a new service that they could monetize in principle.
Afterword
The trend that cellular companies are increasingly turning into mobile Internet providers has become a given. The main revenue, as well as the actual costs, of operators revolve around the expansion of communication channels and the expansion of coverage of high-speed Internet access. Now, few people are interested in information: from what second an outgoing minute of conversation is charged, which operator your interlocutor is served with, in which country he generally resides. Before choosing a package of communication services, we naturally, first of all, pay attention to the amount of Internet traffic included in it, and only then to pleasant bonuses in the form of free minutes / SMS / MMS. The window of opportunity for additional earnings for operators is narrowing. It is almost pointless to join the fight for the redistribution of financial flows in the multi-billion dollar market of IT services, although it is very tempting, without a unique product.
In theory, subject to a number of conditions, the RCS protocol can become a unified platform, which SMS has been successfully serving for a quarter of a century. Functional, colorful, conditionally confidential but at the same time disconnected messengers bring some discomfort and chaos into our lives. Of course, a product that would link billions of users into a single, modern system could easily take root. In practice, the position of one of the leading market players - Apple Corporation, which is not interested in strengthening its competitor, is likely to remain unchanged. Apple will not abandon existing SMS in the future, as it still does not abandon the Lightning connector for the sake of standardization and the convenience of the masses.
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Source: habr.com