RCS has been considered to be the successor to SMS and possibly even a competitor to iMessage ever since Google had announced it. Google’s been working hard to widely roll it out, but carriers? Not so much. Now, Google is finally taking charge of the RCS rollout—sort of.
Later this month, Android users in the UK and France will be able to opt in to RCS Chat services provided directly by Google instead of waiting for their carrier to support it. However, this comes with a catch: since the carrier may not support it for now, it’ll work only over WiFi and cellular data. If a carrier directly offers RCS, Google will let that carrier handle your messages.
Until now, carriers have decided when to offer RCS support and its rollout has been terribly slow, especially in the US. Even if your carrier supports RCS, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to send messages to other RCS users. Your carrier and their carrier have to support the Universal Profile, and not all of them do. Moreover, just because a carrier supports RCS doesn’t mean that every Android phone on that network will get it. Carriers have been approving phones one by one. For example, T-Mobile isn’t supporting RCS on the Pixel 3a.
The process will be opt-in. When users open the Messages app, they’ll see a prompt offering to upgrade to “Chat,” which is what Google is calling RCS in Messages. When you get the prompt, you’ll need to tap “agree” to enable RCS from Google. After that, you’ll be able to text anyone who’s using RCS, regardless of whether Google or the carrier provides the service to that person.
Google says that it will release its RCS support to more countries “throughout the year,” but didn’t commit to saying that it would be available in all regions by the end of the year.
Source: The Verge
