Later next year, we will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association.
If Google’s & Samsungs implementations aren’t compliant with the GSM associations’ standard then I don’t think this is going to work how people are expecting it to. The stuff Google has added to RCS messaging has all been their own implementation of it and not part of the standard, and as far as I’m aware android RCS gets routed through Google’s servers.
I wonder if RCS support is Apple trying to appease the EU with the DMA stuff forcing messaging apps to be interoperable with each other.
All major carriers use Google Jibe as their RCS backend which is the universal profile with a ton of proprietary Google bullshit, and routing all message traffic through Google servers.
This is what I was hoping for. Something that an Android using friend of mine doesn’t grasp is that Apple adopting RCS with E2EE encryption as it’s implemented at the moment makes them beholden to Google. Google’s putting on a song and dance pretending to be the good guy in this situation but if that were true they would have developed E2EE in a way that was a part of the RCS standard instead of proprietary. In a weird turn of events; Apple committing to improving encryption for the RCS standard has turned this into a really good thing for everyone.
I never would have put this situation on my bingo card after years of Apple’s “Blue bubble vs green bubble” crap.
I don’t think google is doing anything particularly nonstandard, they basically wrote the standard. RCS requires a server for the device to talk through, and google has been the main server most devices use. Some mobile carriers hosted their own but found it wasn’t worth the effort since google would do it for them, and the encryption is such that carriers didn’t have much to monetize.
Even if google was doing something nonstandard, the amount of begging they’ve put in to get Apple to support RCS means I’m sure they will do everything on their part to ensure interoperability on their end.
RCS does not support end-to-end encryption, only Google’s proprietary extension does. Google has been simultaneously promoting RCS as a “standard” while prominently advertising a non-standard feature.
Nobody knows at this point outside of Apple. Articles do say that it would require carrier support, so maybe Apple is telling the carriers to do it, or maybe Apple will host their own backend like Google does.
This is the double edged sword of Apple supporting standards sometimes. They stick to the spec in many cases, and then people bitch about nonstandard or poorly implemented things not being compatible.
I think the phrasing is important here.
If Google’s & Samsungs implementations aren’t compliant with the GSM associations’ standard then I don’t think this is going to work how people are expecting it to. The stuff Google has added to RCS messaging has all been their own implementation of it and not part of the standard, and as far as I’m aware android RCS gets routed through Google’s servers.
I wonder if RCS support is Apple trying to appease the EU with the DMA stuff forcing messaging apps to be interoperable with each other.
That’s the same universal profile every android uses
No it’s not. At least not in the US.
All major carriers use Google Jibe as their RCS backend which is the universal profile with a ton of proprietary Google bullshit, and routing all message traffic through Google servers.
No thanks.
This is what I was hoping for. Something that an Android using friend of mine doesn’t grasp is that Apple adopting RCS with E2EE encryption as it’s implemented at the moment makes them beholden to Google. Google’s putting on a song and dance pretending to be the good guy in this situation but if that were true they would have developed E2EE in a way that was a part of the RCS standard instead of proprietary. In a weird turn of events; Apple committing to improving encryption for the RCS standard has turned this into a really good thing for everyone.
I never would have put this situation on my bingo card after years of Apple’s “Blue bubble vs green bubble” crap.
I don’t think google is doing anything particularly nonstandard, they basically wrote the standard. RCS requires a server for the device to talk through, and google has been the main server most devices use. Some mobile carriers hosted their own but found it wasn’t worth the effort since google would do it for them, and the encryption is such that carriers didn’t have much to monetize.
Even if google was doing something nonstandard, the amount of begging they’ve put in to get Apple to support RCS means I’m sure they will do everything on their part to ensure interoperability on their end.
RCS does not support end-to-end encryption, only Google’s proprietary extension does. Google has been simultaneously promoting RCS as a “standard” while prominently advertising a non-standard feature.
So will Apple be rolling their own backend RCS infrastructure for this? It seems unlikely they would want to depend on Google for that.
Nobody knows at this point outside of Apple. Articles do say that it would require carrier support, so maybe Apple is telling the carriers to do it, or maybe Apple will host their own backend like Google does.
They have lots of money and engineers I’m sure it will be fine
This is the double edged sword of Apple supporting standards sometimes. They stick to the spec in many cases, and then people bitch about nonstandard or poorly implemented things not being compatible.