The interoperability problem here is three years old: when Google rolled out RCS on Sprint in late 2016, its implementation didn't connect with RCS on AT&T, T-Mobile, or anyone else, so cross-carrier advanced messaging simply didn't happen (that fragmented rollout is the direct antecedent). With Google unable to broker a unified standard, the four biggest US carriers are now doing it themselves through the Cross Carrier Messaging Initiative, with a 2020 delivery target.
What makes the announcement consequential is who owns the layer: if carriers define cross-network RCS, they — not Google — control Android's default messaging experience. The later arc in our coverage makes this the live question, with AT&T and T-Mobile eventually making Google's Android Messages the RCS/SMS default (AT&T followed T-Mobile on that switch in July 2021), even as the carriers' own joint initiative faded.
First-order effects
Android users on all four networks get a realistic path to cross-carrier rich messaging by 2020, replacing the status quo where RCS worked only within a single carrier's walled garden.
Google loses its position as the would-be orchestrator of US carrier RCS — the carriers, not the OS vendor, now set the interoperability spec and the timeline.
Second-order effects
Apple is pulled into the debate, because a universal RCS baseline on Android sharpens the green-bubble divide unless Apple adopts the same standard — the exact question our later coverage raises when Verizon joined the Android Messages default switch (Verizon completed that trio in July 2021).
Default-app economics shift: whoever ships the preloaded RCS client controls the messaging relationship on hundreds of millions of handsets, putting carrier apps and Google's Android Messages in direct competition for that slot.
Third-order effects
Control of the interoperability layer ultimately decides who owns Android messaging — and our coverage's later chapters point one way: the carriers' joint effort was effectively abandoned by spring 2021 (Light Reading reported the initiative looked dead) while the default client converged on Google's app, suggesting the consortium lost to the platform.
If the pattern holds, SMS's successor arrives as a de facto platform standard set by whichever player controls the client, not as the neutral industry specification the carriers originally proposed.
The trend: US mobile messaging is consolidating around RCS as the SMS successor, with the decisive fight being over whether carriers or Google own the interoperability and client layers.
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/...
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/...
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…
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/...
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/...
🤔 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…
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/...
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/...