It is controlled and monetizable by the telcos. It isn’t better. And it’s barely standardized. Google sells a service to telcos to implement RCS that doesn’t really work well with anyone else’s RCS, or didn’t.
Go look at the amount of threads with people saying “my RCS message from my Samsung didn’t get to my friend on T-Mobile with a pixel”.
This is not the future anyone deserves.
fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I don’t see any public license for GSMA Universal Profile and it seems you have to engage directly with GSMA to get any detail on the standard. Very much the opposite of things like Signal which not only are the standards public but so are the reference implementations.
I still don’t see an argument for why yet another proprietary standard and protocol is a good thing.
nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 11 months ago
well RCS is to be the successor to SMS, which I believe was also introduced by GSMA
phillaholic@lemm.ee 11 months ago
What you are using on Android isn’t RCS, it’s RCS+Google’s proprietary extension. There is no encryption in the spec, and the original implementation that went through carriers is ignored and it goes through Google. It’s essentially Google’s iMessage and they are trying to find their way into breaking Apple’s market share under false pretense.
fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I’ve just been reading the RCS Universal Profile Service Definition Document and it does stipulate encryption should be used but is hardly defined how encryption should be implemented nor does it set an interoperable standard for it. I like RCS even less now.
“Methods for encryption, client verification, user authentication and access authorisation are applied by the client and the network on a per interface and protocol basis.”
So basically RCS is happy for there to be interoperability with regards to encryption, almost forcing interoperable implementations to forgo encryption so that different implementations can communicate.
Signal protocol is far far far better a standard than this lazy “service definition”.
nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 11 months ago
I know, but isn’t the point that Google Messages is interoperable with other implementations such as T-Mobile’s or Verizon’s?
fartsparkles@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
RCS is still IP based so why SMS should be replaced with RCS over Signal still isn’t clear. RCS and Signal are both IP based protocols yet one is proprietary and the other is libre. If we’re getting rid of SMS, we should be replacing it with something anyone can implement without any concerns for licensing or the standard being controlled by a single entity (which Google seems to be positioning themselves to be).