Consumers are ready and the technology works. What the market needs now is a shared approach to bring the product to market. We’ve seen this play out with other product launches; without common requirements, shared processes, and a convener to bring them together, it will take years and it has.
A business can have the right use case, a polished campaign brief, and customers who would love a richer message, and still wait months for its RCS campaign to be approved. That is a normal outcome in the US today, and it is slowing down a channel that deserves better.
Rich Communication Services (RCS) removes the 160-character limit and presents a message that looks like a website, with imagery and design that hold attention. Apple’s decision to support RCS gave the product real momentum, because it let two walled gardens interoperate after years of RCS working only on Android devices. Consumer interest is there. The friction is on the operational side.
Why every operator ends up with its own version of RCS
We all know that text messaging in the US is not regulated the same way voice is. Each mobile operator is solely responsible for writing its own requirements and bringing the product to market. That means three separate organizations are productizing, launching, and selling messaging products on their own timelines. Requirements differ, onboarding differs, and pricing differs.
I don’t think this is a story about anyone doing something wrong. Operators have to manage their own networks, their own network requirements and ultimately face an antitrust limitation: they can’t discuss rates with each other. That makes it hard to settle on cohesive billing models or pricing structures, and it keeps the conversation from getting started on much else.
Other markets show what the alternative could look like. Outside the US, the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) published a standard that carriers adopted, and Google worked closely with the GSMA along the way. On our side of the pond, each operator tends to add its own spin. Google’s attempt at a common baseline is still running into some friction and delay here.
What a shared go-to-market looks like
When a new product launches, it needs agreed requirements for how it functions, which elements have to be implemented for it to succeed, and how a subscriber interacts with it. That runs from sending a single message all the way to reporting a problem when something goes wrong. None of that requires operators to talk about money.
If operators agreed on all of it, and aggregators adopted it, customers would face one implementation instead of three. I propose that the industry settle everything except how each operator prices the service.
We have precedent for how this happens. Short Message Service (SMS) reached the market because CTIA, the wireless industry association that represents T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, brought the carriers together. When a third party gets carriers and aggregators into one cohesive conversation, things seem to move faster.
CTIA has not been idle. Spam containment, the rollout of 10-digit long code (10DLC) messaging, and changes to the short code registry have taken a lot of its attention, and all of that work matters. RCS is just now reaching the top of its list. Google, which has been involved in RCS for years, is also working to bring operators together, and there seems to be more energy behind that effort lately. We have been talking about RCS for roughly 20 years. A more proactive approach 15 years ago would have put us in a much better place, but the convening work is underway now.
Operators have strong reasons to see it through. When subscribers use native voice and messaging on the handset, the carrier is paid. When they move to WhatsApp to talk with businesses, the carrier earns nothing. A wider RCS rollout means more subscriber usage, more volume, and more revenue, and it keeps the best messaging experience on the device where the operator participates.
What I see in customer conversations
My team is usually brought in when a customer is struggling to complete an RCS campaign brief because the process differs from one operator to the next. Approval for an RCS campaign takes far longer than for 10DLC or short code campaigns, and it can run to months. The question I’m asked is whether anything can be done to speed it up, either through a conversation at the carrier level or at the industry level. I take the same customer perspective to the panels I speak on. Registries and processes look fine on paper, butI want operators to hear how they play out in practice.
The right advice depends on the use case: how much the customer is using delivery receipts, how much throughput they need, and what they are trying to accomplish. Sometimes a short code is the better fit. Sometimes toll-free is. In many of those conversations I am simply explaining how long the RCS agent review and approval are taking.
And if we don’t get this right, customers could abandon the channel. Some businesses are moving to over-the-top options like WhatsApp because the US operators are taking so long, and I don’t think the industry or the carriers want that. And from a consumer point of view, RCS has the advantage of being natively installed on nearly all mobile devices in the US. We have lost time, but I believe we will get there, and I believe RCS is the right platform for a lot of customers.
The next move is a collective one
I’ve said on stage many times that we are all better together. We are better when we share data and know what traffic is running across our networks, our neighbors’ networks, and T-Mobile’s. The same applies to RCS. The three mobile operators, the aggregators, Google, and a convener like CTIA can agree on shared requirements, shared processes, and a common go-to-market, leaving pricing to each operator.
Consumer interest in RCS is already there. The industry’s job is to roll it out in a way that makes it easy for consumers and for the businesses trying to reach them, and the sooner operators align on the non-pricing pieces, the sooner everyone benefits.
