RCS alone will not be enough to reclaim revenues lost to OTT players

SPAIN: Speaking on the opening day of the Mobile World Congress Movius, a global leader in solution enablement for service providers, says the GSMA-led Rich Communications Suite (RCS) alone will not be enough to reclaim revenues lost to OTT players.

According to figures released by Ovum, operators will lose $54 billion by 2016 due to smartphone messaging apps.

For operators RCS is being billed as a technology to strengthen relationships with customers and harness further revenue opportunities from advanced personal communications.

“Operators must innovate by not only offering personalized solutions that focus on user needs but also by delivering open, real-time, voice and messaging services on their core networks and blending network based intelligence with social networks” said Amit Modi, CTO of Movius.

“RCS is a step in the right direction but is too focused on the network and needs to be more about the user. Operators must act now to combat a loss of control. We want to place the operator as the central point connecting all social networks together and help them to take back the control,” said Modi. “Essential to operators regaining control is to enable the consumer to seamlessly connect all of the IP-based networks together on one user interface.”

Movius works with some of the largest telecoms service providers in the world and recently launched CONNECT aimed at keeping users connected, without the use of multiple applications. It enables operators to become a communications enabler by federating and moderating all communications with instant messaging networks, RCS, and social networks.