RCS inches forwards

Jeremy Green, Ovum

Mobile World Congress, 2010, BARCELONA, SPAIN: One can only hope that the GSMA’s decision to adopt OneVoice does not consign it to the same standards-body limbo as the Rich Communication Suite (RCS). RCS, also a GSMA initiative backed by operators and vendors, was intended to be the mobile industry’s answer to over-the-top players’ realtime communications services and VoIP offerings.

Two years after launch, there is little to show for it but a string of pilots and demonstration projects. Last year the GSMA announced a trial by the three French operators, which would test RCS interworking; this year it is announcing another trial, involving Japanese operators. Telefonica and Orange in Spain have declared their intention to carry out pre-commercial interoperability tests, and Wind and Telecom Italia have reported the successful conclusion of a similar exercise in Italy.

The French trial is still ongoing, and there is no publicly available news about how it has gone or what has been learned. And the specification has now reached Release 3.0, which includes support for features such as location sharing and enhanced presence information. We question whether Google and Apple will be particularly concerned.