RCS closer to replace SMS as default service

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Ongopotse Motlhanke, CEO: Khumbula Tech

by TINTSWALO BALOYI 
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – MASSIVE growth is projected for Rich Communication Services (RCS), which could replace Short Message/Messaging Service (SMS) as early as next year.

An Android news platform forecasts RCS to grow more than 200 percent over the next five years to 3,8 billion users.

Juniper Research notes the figure going into 2023 is estimated to be 1,2 billion users.

“RCS facts and stats aside, what’s really gobsmacking to me and many leaders I interact with in the South African and overseas ICT industries, is that this clearly next-gen messaging technology continues to be flat-out ignored by Apple,” said Ongopotse Motlhanke, Chief Executive Officer of Khumbula Tech.

He said if stakeholders were to continue to grow the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) for the benefit of all 8 billion people, they need to enhance accessibility in the form of reach and affordability.

“It really is as simple as that,” Motlhanke said.

RCS can work on Android devices running Android 5.0 or later.

“RCS so obviously represents the natural evolution from the traditional and hugely-popular SMS and MMS messaging standards that ignoring this upgrade is like failing to adopt colour TV after the black and white box,” the executive said.

He added RCS is the logical SMS replacement for native, default, text-based communications between Apple and Android devices.

“The good news is that the year 2023 will take us much closer to RCS replacing SMS as the default native text messaging service for all phones in the future,” Motlhanke.

RCS is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between phone and carrier, aiming at replacing SMS messages with a text-message system that is richer, provides phonebook polling and can transmit in-call multimedia.

GSM Association spent over a decade fine-tuning RCS before it made its official debut in 2016.

– CAJ News

 

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