Google says Android users in UK and France can, later this month, opt in to RCS Chat services provided directly by Google instead of waiting for carrier support
That seems like yet another minor status check-in on the service meant to replace SMS, but in fact it's a huge shift in strategy …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google built RCS on a carrier-first model: a 2016 partnership with global and regional carriers was supposed to move Android messaging off SMS through carrier-deployed clients, and the 2018 launch of Chat formalized the protocol's feature set — typing indicators, full-res media, group texts — with carriers still as the gatekeepers.
This announcement breaks that dependency: in the UK and France, users can opt into RCS Chat provisioned directly by Google later this month, no carrier support required. It is the first sign Google is willing to route around the very partners the rollout was designed around, and it prefigures the US-wide rollout in Android Messages that followed months later.
First-order effects
- Android users in the UK and France gain RCS features (typing indicators, high-res media, group chat) immediately via opt-in, instead of waiting for their carrier to enable them.
- Carriers in both markets lose their gatekeeper role over the messaging upgrade path — Google now controls provisioning, and with it the customer relationship, for anyone who opts in.
Second-order effects
- Carriers face a choice between accelerating their own RCS deployments or ceding messaging to Google's client, since a bypass option makes carrier delay cost them relevance rather than protecting their SMS revenue.
- The UK/France template gives Google a repeatable mechanism for markets with slow carrier adoption, which is exactly how the service scaled to all US users and then to a completed global rollout with encryption testing by late 2020.
Third-order effects
- If the bypass pattern holds, RCS consolidates around Google as the de facto operator of Android messaging infrastructure — the same stack it later turned on by default and extended with group end-to-end encryption in 2023, meaning the protocol's privacy roadmap runs through Google, not carriers.
- Carrier-controlled messaging (the RCS vision of 2016) structurally gives way to a platform-controlled one: the entity that ships the default client and can provision the service directly sets the terms for the entire Android messaging ecosystem.
The trend: Android messaging is shifting from carrier-partnered RCS deployment to Google-direct provisioning, with Google's client — not carrier infrastructure — becoming the control point for the SMS replacement.