RCS: Richer media and functionality, same platform 
Louis Corrigan
16/09/2009

Ask two technologists in two mobile communications companies what IMS (IP Media Subsystem - and the services its standards support) means to them, and you will probably get two different answers. The mobile industry has adopted standards and then ended up updating them to meet localised challenges and business opportunities.

In contrast, the RCS (Rich Communication Suite) initiative is proposing and delivering a whole suite of new services that was conceptualised to leverage the IMS structured framework for their delivery and demand. However, they could well deliver the second generation of successful messaging services to follow SMS.

That's a bold claim, so why might it succeed? Firstly, as a wider consortium, RCS brings some consensus on a list of priority services to roll out, based around media-rich/feature-rich calling and enhanced messaging. Secondly, the RCS project is customer-driven rather than technology driven, meaning that it is being designed and specified with the operators needs in mind, rather than by the technology vendors alone, and is also designed around the end user experience to ensure ease of use.

In the near term, RCS will provide a range of services, specifically:
- Rich calling: the original component of RCS, allowing the sharing of multimedia content during calls
- Enhanced phonebook: above all supporting presence-enabled contacts
- Next-generation messaging: including chat-style threading, multimedia content and better message history/search functionality

Turning RCS into the next SMS
So how can operators monetise the RCS opportunity? What factors will decide whether RCS has the right to claim the title of being ‘the next new messaging service'?

RCS messaging will be a value-add service with lots of enhancements over generic text messaging. In addition to the presence-enabled phonebook and an IM-style chat interface, RCS also includes a specification for groups which is notably missing from the generic SMS service. But the industry has learned from technologies that have fallen by the wayside that the provision of a service with a great list of features does not guarantee its success.

At Acision, we think there are some essential issues to consider in making RCS a success. RCS is already has an early start due to some handset users who have already been exposed to ideas like presence (through Instant Messenger), and threads (a communication paradigm already popularised through 'chat'). That familiarity lowers the barriers to adoption, but these alone does not make RCS the natural successor to SMS in terms of both ubiquity and uptake, or in terms of commercial success for operators, without heeding some central requirements.

Requirements for successful uptake
The first of those requirements is on the handset. To drive adoption, RCS messaging must not be a standalone messaging service, but instead be transparently incorporated into the existing messaging technology on the handset. The user must not be asked to choose between SMS, MMS or RCS - there should be a single ‘Messaging' option - and the underlying technology should take care of all the options and choices. In this way, adoption can be driven by exposure or osmosis.

If users are exposed to advanced RCS messaging functionality in the process of their traditional day to day text messaging, there will be a natural migration to the advanced service, which would either not occur at all or at best occur more slowly, when the new service is presented as a separate application on the phone. It also solves the classic problem of ‘who bought the first fax machine'. If the technology rolls out as part of a standard interface, it can propagate much faster.

A further underlying requirement is the interoperability across operators' platforms. Remember old films from the 1950's, where a Head of State has five telephones on his desk? That's where many messaging users are at the moment: different clients for different technologies and different operators, and different messaging services to send messages to different friends. The voice telephony service has evolved from being small private islands of communication to today's world where anyone can call anybody on the planet - regardless of whether they are using a mobile or fixed-line phone, whether they are using VoIP or traditional switched circuit, or whether their number is a national or international.

Yet with messaging today, a user has to know if he is sending an SMS or an MMS, use different clients to send messages to phone numbers or to alphanumeric addresses, and cannot readily send a text message to a group of users across SMS, MSN and Skype. That messaging island structure of today is what the RCS initiative is committed to breaking down. When deployed appropriately, RCS messaging can be a stepping-stone to connecting these islands.

The Internet companies have difficulties in learning this lesson (think about the separate silos of MSN, AOL and Yahoo chat interfaces), and mobile operators should rightly demand that RCS is not only scalable but seamlessly interoperable. A messaging user should neither have to know nor care what device type or model, or what messaging service (or preference) their friend or contact uses - and these should certainly not be a barrier to communication between any two users.

Hence, it is doubly important in making RCS messaging (or any future messaging service) a commercial success. If a user has to make a choice about which messaging service he should use, he will choose the old familiar - the lowest common denominator. If a user has to know what type of device or client his peer is using, then he will again be discouraged from choosing new services, and may subsequently be discouraged from sending a message at all.

However, on the basis that every successful message delivery has a probability of generating a response (which is itself a charged message) - then two inherent advantages of RCS messaging - group messaging and ‘chat' mode - have great potential for increasing the volume or messages delivered. Hence, there is potential for consequential new messaging traffic even if only one of the parties has an RCS device.

For this reason, interoperability will be the key to the success of RCS, as it will ensure that users with RCS-enabled devices can freely and transparently communicate with non RCS equipped users, and ensure the uptake of RCS messaging. Interoperability will also maximise the consequential growth in messaging traffic.

The challenge is to extend the messaging platform to support RCS messaging within the existing architecture and ensure that interoperability is not only apparent on the handset, but extended throughout the application layer - and a unified application means a unified inbox. One of the irritations for users with initial deployments of MMS was the requirement for multiple inboxes. Again, incorporating RCS and SMS applications will mean a simple and familiar interface for users.

Just as SMS, and MMS to a certain extent, have opened up a new genre of messaging applications, it is important that RCS messaging in its future form is evolved to also cater for A2P (application to person) traffic. In the future, we can envisage many imaginative applications in which people will glean information by engaging with multimedia-enabled "messaging bots" or automated avatars.

Who's buying?
As the first handsets appear, it will invariably attract a premium audience but eventually RCS (or its successor) will become a volume play - and eventually the core model for messaging. Ultimately, RCS will not be a high-end service. In particular, the interface will be ubiquitous enough to appear on even basic handsets – mobile users certainly will not need to upgrade their handset to use RCS messaging. As a service, it will therefore become democratic like SMS, and we will see the same sort of development pattern moving forward.

RCS will take five years or more to reach anything like an SMS-like level of propagation and penetration, because of the necessary requirements to develop the range of handsets, and to roll them out in sufficient volume across global markets. But even in the interim, RCS messaging will present a real opportunity to augment SMS as a key revenue generator for operators.

- Louis Corrigan is Chief Technical Officer at Acision.

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