
Google is ramping up its efforts to replace SMS with RCS - elorant
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-android-rcs-messaging
======
dade_
What a horrible headline, but Wired being the source is enough of a warning.
Google is doing nothing nefarious here, SMS needs to go the way of 9600bps
modems. Newsflash, your phone calls aren't encrypted on the PSTN and neither
are your SMS messages. RCS is a great thing as it means interoperability and
compatibility which are words that causes anaphylactic shock at Apple.
iMessage and WhatsApp are the worst technologies hoisted on our society, but
make possible by lazy and money grubbing owners of carrier networks.

~~~
sametmax
Will RCS work on dumb phones and phones without data or wifi ?

Asking for real, I've never heard of the tech.

SMS for me are a godsend. They work with every phones, every carriers. They
work on terrible networks. They work in the mountains, in the country side, in
the trains and cars when going fast, in many tunnels and metros. They work in
crazily lost places when I travel. Once I sent a text to my father from the
Dogon country, a northern part of Mali where there is only sand and a few
goats.

Lost your phone ? If you can remember/find the phone number, get a cheap sim,
send a text, you are back in business. No permission scheme, no auth, no
friends to add or certificate. 1 SIM = 1 ID is also very convenient.

SMS is the email of phone. Limited. Primitive. Efficient. Reliable.

So if you want to replace it with something else, you need a very good story.

~~~
dingus
SMS has always been unreliable. It has no place in modern communications.

No delivery confirmation: messages silently drop and the recipient is unaware
you attempted to message them. There is no notification to you that your
message failed to deliver.

Profoundly long delivery delays: messages sometimes get stuck and get
delivered hours or days later. "Hey dude meet me out front" delivered 16 hours
later, etc.

Length restrictions: some phones still do not handle long messages correctly.
If the character limit is exceeded, messages are cut into unordered pieces, or
the message is truncated and part of the message is simply deleted.

I'm not saying RCS is the answer, just pointing out that SMS is garbage.

~~~
ddingus
I have none of those experiences.

Use SMS constantly. Often with extensions, MMS, read receipts, etc...

It just works. Faults are rare.

I do not disagree on it being "garbage", in the same way email is, but both
bits of tech work well.

I can count faults on one hand per quarter, and that is among a ton of comms
with many people.

~~~
dingus
Maybe some hardware/carrier configurations have less problems?

All I can say is, in the past 15+ years of SMS messaging, in the US, on every
carrier, with devices ranging from the early Nokias to the latest iPhones, I
have had reliability problems that are frequent enough for me to avoid SMS
when possible.

~~~
ddingus
It is crazy how different our experiences are!

I travel a lot, internationally at times. SMS just works.

Maybe it has to do with hardware and carrier. I use Verizon, or whatever cheap
plan I get on a SIM card.

Samsung phone, and it gives read notifications when the other party agrees to
them, and is good on fails, in that I know when one did not get sent.

When I make mistakes, I even get SMS over major flyover cities. Like I pull my
phone out, and several emails and texts came through.

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quaquaqua1
I will be extremely displeased if they do. It is a basically free way to
communicate silently and asynchronously with virtually any phone in a given
area.

The same cannot always be said for other messaging apps. Sure, you can
communicate globally with Telegram and Whatsapp, but they require a slightly
more stable connection and of course they use data which has a non-zero cost.

I work in a building that has horrible, horrible reception. The only thing
making it out of those walls is text messages. Whatsapp even will rarely work,
and Hangouts messages? Forget about it. It has to ping a server 17 times
before sending a message, seemingly.

~~~
sokoloff
SMS is far from "free". It's often bundled into a package consumers buy, so
"included" perhaps, but the actual data costs for SMS traffic are insanely
higher than data connection traffic.

~~~
pixl97
Eh, SMS, the very short text protocol is insanely cheap for the networks. MMS
does eat a lot more data though.

~~~
londons_explore
SMS is not as cheap as most people imply.

Sure, the total bitrate of sms messages is low, but the software and services
are all legacy, require people with special skills to setup, and have quite
high license fees to keep running.

Set up your own SMSC and tell us how easy it was...?

~~~
lukeschlather
The bitrate is a huge deal. High costs on the backend are a legitimate
concern, but ultimately we've got a finite number of base stations and some
areas simply will not get base stations, ever. SMS is probably the only
protocol that can extend any amount of coverage into these remote areas where
message delivery can be a matter of life or death.

And some of these areas aren't even that remote, just unintentionally RF
shielded.

------
lol768
The sooner mobile networks start acting like dumb IP pipes, the better. I
don't care about SMS (I can't remember the last time I sent a message with
it), I can use VoIP for calls and everything else uses TCP/IP or UDP/IP. SMS
is legacy precisely because it requires mobile carriers to maintain the
system. RCS is a joke because it requires exactly the same amount of co-
operation and aoption has been terrible to date.

Google's move away from internet-based messaging (unconnected to the mobile
carrier) was a step in the wrong direction, but one that was unsurprising
given their track record with messaging applications.

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jwm4
SMS operates via the SS7 protocol; SS7 protocol-based signaling occurs in a
separate (side-band) channel of the voice-based public switched telephone
network. It is used for call routing (setup and tear down) of a switched PTP
connection, billing, other administrative purposes, and for the transmission
of SMS messages. It existed long before (1970's) there was such a thing as SMS
(developed in early 990's). Consequently, it is essentially free (from the
marginal cost perspective that governs economic decision making in telecoms)
to the carriers. I speak as a former RBOC and ISP executive who was heavily
involved in financial decision making.

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itg
No thanks Google, I would prefer a communication platform/protocol that tech
companies don't control. Last thing I want is them deciding what messages I
can send and who can use the platform.

~~~
vidanay
So...paper, pencil, and postage?

~~~
sverige
It's as simple as retaining SMS.

------
coding123
I dont understand why Google can't do what Apple did. And they did it like 10
years ago.

~~~
jeroenhd
They tried. Several times. Google Talk / Hangouts was an early attempt; Allo
tried again when Hangouts didn't take the public by storm and Google needed to
get Assistant out to more people.

One problem with Google is that it can't keep any modern project running for
more than 2 years. Such unreliability makes it difficult for people to use any
new Google app as a primary means of communication.

Another problem is that end-to-end encryption goes against everything Google
is about: information mining. Google can't make a direct profit of such a
communication system, so e2e won't happen anytime soon.

~~~
ulfw
And they can't decide what to use for communication. Google Login or phone
number. Later it became both. A mess of systems, principles, apps, support and
branding (and internally teams).

------
19870213
I suppose adoption would help if Google's 'Carrier Services' app on Android
didn't look like someone accidentally uploaded the base example app.

The first time I saw that app in the updates list I thought I somehow had
gotten some badly disguised malware...

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neltnerb
And, of course, t-mobile will only support it on phones they sell in their
stores. Which are all too big for people with hand problems like me.

Can Google bypass the carrier on this, or can you only do that with something
like a google voice number? All the other features aside, being able to
receive text messages in my office that has no cell service would sure be
nice.

Moreso if it integrates with Signal so _at the least_ I actually get messages
from my iPhone wielding friends with only Apple chat clients when I have
connectivity to the internet.

------
segmondy
This is a move to fight Whatsapp but with a nice catch, it will be the default
app without being accused for being a monopoly. Imagine if Google made a
Whatsapp alternative and then had it as the default SMS app, the world would
lose it's mind. However if they get the carriers to buy in, they can maybe
pull off this coup. Good luck to them, I hope they fail.

------
floatboth
TIL

> The GSM Association, a mobile industry body, chose to adopt RCS as the
> replacement for SMS back in 2008

Wasn't that the MMS days?

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burtonator
Awesome... another messaging technology that Google can completely screw up.

At this point I've lost all hope that the company can execute.

They're 3rd place in cloud computing. Elasticsearch is destroying them on
search. They're constantly fucking up on Youtube.

~~~
seabrookmx
Hardly a Google fanboy and I agree with the general sentiment that their
messaging apps up until now have been a dumpster fire. But Google is a huge
company and certain parts can definitely succeed when others fail.

70% of the developed world have an Android phone.. I'm typing this one one.

They might be third to cloud computing because they were late to the party.
Having used their tech and AWS, I can say confidently that they're executing
just fine. Especially with respect to k8s support (oh yeah.. they made k8s).

And how is ElasticSearch destroying them on search? ElasticSearch as a system
of indexing things is not remotely comparable to the web scale implementation
Google runs and orders via their Page Rank algorithm. Am I missing something
here?

I'll concede YouTube. Nobody know how/why they rank shit there and it makes no
sense.

Anyways, my point is that blanket statements for any entity as large as
Google, MS, Apple, IBM etc. are largely ridiculous.

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remir
If Google can bypass the carriers entirely, which from what I understand
they're trying to do with RCS, then this could be interesting.

~~~
remir
Source: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-
chat-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/17/18681573/google-rcs-chat-android-
texting-carriers-imessage-encryption)

 _For the first time in years, Google will directly offer a better default
texting experience to Android users instead of waiting for cellphone carriers
to do it. It’s not quite the Google equivalent of an iMessage service for
Android users, but it’s close. Not knowing when or if RCS Chat would be
available for your phone was RCS’s second biggest problem, and Google is
fixing it._

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devoply
what happens if/when Google simply drops support for SMS? It could force this
easily.

~~~
dogma1138
I don’t think you can drop support for SMS, at least not in the US receiving
messages is required for FCC compliance for handsets currently iirc.

~~~
freeone3000
What are the consequences of this? What prevents Google from making and
selling a six-inch ("phone-sized") tablet, and moving SMS to Hangouts and
calls to Duo?

~~~
Macha
Is this device going to rely on public Wifi to get messages when out and
about? Otherwise, if it needs a data connection, you'll have to get mobile
networks involved, and I doubt they'd co-operate with an end run around
themselves.

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nenadg
Google wanting to put and control under it's umbrella i no news. This is sad.

~~~
readams
Google could go the Apple route and make a proprietary version that silently
substitutes itself. Instead they're pushing for a standards based approach

~~~
nenadg
They already did that with google talk, android, etc.

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hn_throwaway_99
> Lane compares it to WhatsApp or iMessage, with everything from better photo
> or video sharing within messages to typing indicators and read receipts
> available

You may say "typing indicators and read receipts", I say "spying".

