Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint announce the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative to bring RCS to Android phones in 2020
Here's a shocker. All four major US carriers — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile — have just announced that they're joining forces to deliver RCS messaging in the US for Android smartphones in 2020.
9to5GoogleBen Schoon
Context & Ripple Effects
Carrier-run advanced messaging has been fragmented for years: when Google rolled out RCS on Sprint in late 2016, its implementation did not interoperate with the RCS services AT&T, T-Mobile, and others were running separately, leaving each network an island Google's Sprint-only RCS rollout.
This announcement is the four major US carriers attempting to fix that by fiat — pooling their networks under the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative to make RCS work across Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Android phones in 2020, with the carriers rather than Google setting the terms.
First-order effects
Android users on all four networks become the immediate beneficiaries: rich messaging no longer stops at carrier boundaries, replacing the per-network silos that made cross-carrier RCS unusable.
Google's role shifts from broker to supplier — the carriers are claiming interoperability for themselves, which pressures the client side of the stack where Google ships Android Messages.
Second-order effects
AT&T and T-Mobile subsequently making Google's Android Messages the default SMS/RCS app shows the initiative converging on Google's client anyway, just through carrier defaults rather than a Google-led rollout carriers adopting Android Messages as default.
A working cross-carrier RCS baseline sharpens the question the carriers' own later statements raise: whether Apple will swap iMessage/SMS fallback behavior for RCS, since interoperability with Android is exactly what the initiative delivers Verizon joining the Android Messages default switch.
Third-order effects
The consortium model itself proved fragile — within roughly eighteen months, comments from Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile suggested the joint initiative had been quietly killed CCMI's collapse, with interoperability advancing instead through unilateral carrier decisions on defaults.
If that pattern holds, US messaging standards get set not by carrier joint ventures but by whoever controls the default messaging app on the handset — a structural win for platform owners over network operators.
The trend: US mobile messaging standardization is shifting from carrier consortia negotiating interoperability to platform-side defaults deciding it de facto.
Look please read my rant about RCS but if you can't just know that it is summed up by this press image of the cross-carrier mobile payments company ISIS. It was easy to laugh when they messed up payments. It will not be when they messed up texting. https://www.theverge.com/...
Exclusive details on the big new joint venture from AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint to support RCS on Android. They're making an app, they promise to work with Google, and more. Click: https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Google: let's do RCS the right way! Carriers: Google: do it, or we will do it for you. Carriers: ok fine but we need to mess some things up first. also we would like all the credit and none of the blame. https://twitter.com/...
Google statement on the US carrier's surprise announcement that they're rolling their own RCS app, several hours after the initial press release. If you told me the carriers left Google out of it out of pique I wouldn't be surprised. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.c…
Did the carriers just announce that they are going around Google to create an app-based messaging service based on the open RCS standard? This is diabolical. This is awful. And this will end badly. https://www.verizon.com/...
I have lost count of how many failed efforts there have been to make RCS work. None of them ever had the slightest chance of working and this one won't either. https://www.theverge.com/...
So to sum up, this is: - A new messaging app - Made by the carriers - Without Google and Apple Can't wait to use a crappy app to send messages to half my friends https://twitter.com/...
🤔 cause when I think of a great user experience I think of carriers. Look at what they called this thing “Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI)” and you can decide on how successful they will be. Now Google has a morale obligation to get something done to save us all!!! https…