FRESH

Hacker News

Home

RCS for Business

56 points by sshh12

by dfajgljsldkjag

5 subcomments

It's unfortunate that RCS is basically a de-facto Google walled garden in most countries. On android you can only use RCS in the Google Messages app and trying to build your own is explicitly blocked. [1] And of course the bonus that rooted devices are banned from RCS. All the propaganda Google spread to get Apple onboard (only with Google's blessing of course, Google could kick apple off if they wanted) was such a big win for them.
As a business I wanted RCS to be a simple upgrade to SMS, but instead they came up with this mess. Businesses using RCS for Business can send messages to anyone, but customers wanting to get in touch with your business can't. They can only reply to a message you sent first. And of course Google is the gatekeeper for anyone to be allowed to use it.
1. https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2994

by akersten

1 subcomments

Perfect I can't wait for the deluge of spam texts with real clickable buttons to trick me instead of just a 320x320 picture of one.
Let's see, RCS:
* needlessly complicated protocol, such that only a behemoth such as Google could administrate it
* Intensely leans on device attestation to even let you on to the network
* Tenfold the multimedia touchpoints as MMS, correspondingly it will have 10x the zero days
* Certainly wiretapped at law enforcement's whim
* Took 15 years to roll out
* And you still get green bubbles on iPhone
I wish we'd all switch to signal and the telcos would get back to being dumb pipes. But no, we need to support Read indicators and ad carousels in our baseband

by gruez

3 subcomments

So is RCS a Google platform, like how iMessage is an Apple platform? It might theoretically be a GSMA standard, but from their marketing page and how it's implemented in reality, it seems like it's the former.

by trollbridge

2 subcomments

RCS is basically spam-only messaging at this point. You can enhance your messaging experience by just turning it off.

by iboshoer

0 subcomment

Founder of Clerk Chat here, I work with RCS for Business day in and day out and know the protocol inside and out.
A lot of the criticism in this thread is fair from a client / handset perspective, but it’s important to separate consumer RCS from RCS for Business. On the business side, RCS is actually a very powerful, well-designed protocol with massive potential when used the way it was intended: verified senders, conversational flows, and rich interactions at scale.
At Clerk Chat, we’re leading the way on conversational RCS, not just blasting messages, but enabling real two-way conversations that feel native, secure, and useful. Yes, Google is the gatekeeper as well as carriers today, but that’s also what enables trust, verification, and deliverability at global scale. When you work with the ecosystem instead of against it, it’s surprisingly effective.
We’re investing heavily in RCS because we believe it’s the natural evolution of business messaging beyond SMS. For companies that want to engage users where they already are with rich UI, fast responses, and verified identity, RCS is hard to beat.
If you’re interested in exploring what’s actually possible with RCS for Business today, feel free to reach out. Happy to enable folks and share real-world learnings.
Igor, Founder @ Clerk Chat

by kotaKat

2 subcomments

If RCS is supposed to be an open standard, then how come Google can gatekeep the "for business" bit for themselves?

by enginous

4 subcomments

I'm pretty unclear about how the experience they showcase in the video would work on iOS. Maybe Android has APIs for this, but on iOS it looks like RCS just supports green-bubble messages, links and files/multimedia. But in the demo they show multi-choice cards, carousels, cards with buttons, and reply auto-suggestions.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it also looks like this needs to be agent-initiated, ie. you can't add a "Text us" button that will take you to this experience. (But you could capture a phone number, and text them _iff_ they have RCS available and enabled.)
Overall, seems questionable whether this is worth integrating if the experience is so fractured across platforms and many people might not even have RCS. The concept of a platform for rich messaging across platforms sounds good though.

0 subcomment

by browningstreet

1 subcomments

I had my family iPhones revert to RCS. We had to delete chats and reset settings and reboot phones to get iMessage connected between these contacts again.
And it’s weird how bad sms messaging on Google Voice is, still. RCS would be welcome.

by cush

0 subcomment

Would be great if we could focus on getting RCS for consumers working first

by joshstrange

0 subcomment

RCS is such trash. It's amazing that people fell for Google's BS in pushing Apple to implement it. I imagine that in the near future I will just disable it on my phone if I start getting spam. I push all my Android friends to use other messaging platforms, even with RCS it's a crap-shoot and pictures still come through looking like it's the year 2000.
RCS was a bad idea literally from day 1 and I do not understand why so many people thought it was worth pursuing. I mean other than Google since they effectively own the "standard", finally after untold number of failed messaging projects they have something they strong-armed other idiots into using.

by sshh12

0 subcomment

TIL they have a rich multimedia API for RCS.

by xnx

0 subcomment

I'd believe Google cared more about RCS if it worked with Google Voice.

by bigbuppo

1 subcomments

What does this incarnation of RCS mean? Relentlessly Cancelled Services?

by rkrueger11

0 subcomment

Not really sure why this was posted today. However, I see a lot of confusion / misinformation in the comments, so here is a simplified explanation of how RCS works, while recognizing the topic is more complex technically and commercially. (Source/disclaimer: I am a product manager at Twilio and work on RCS.)
Google bought Jibe Mobile in 2015. [1] The GSMA Universal Profile (UP) defines the industry standard for RCS features. [2] Messaging apps (for example, Google Messages or Messages on iOS) implement those features, and carriers expose them through a MaaP (Messaging as a Platform). The GSMA publishes UP updates periodically; UP v3 was released in February 2025 [3], though the latest publicly iOS version supports UP v2.4.
Most carriers globally now use Google’s Jibe MaaP instead of building their own as Google Messages supports the Jibe MaaP. That choice reduced the fragmentation that previously produced many inconsistent Android messaging experiences. In addition, I believe E2EE encryption was only added to the UP in v3, Google had previously added it to Google Messages outside of the spec, as as a result only worked when both users are using Google Messages.
iOS Messages can technically support any MaaP because the downloaded carrier profile specifies which MaaP URL to use.
A MaaP supports both person-to-person (P2P) and application-to-person (A2P) RCS. P2P RCS uses phone numbers. Carriers generally do not enable RCS on the business phone numbers companies use for SMS today. For A2P RCS, businesses must create a chatbot/agent entity in the MaaP with its own image, display name, and contact details. Google’s MaaP provides an interface for businesses to create those RCS agent profiles; carriers then approve which agents may message subscribers on their networks. Theoretically this also helps make it easier for messaging clients to reduce spam / fraud, since traffic from legitimate business will be more distinguishable from P2P fraudulent traffic—both from a technical perspective (phone number vs chatbot/agent entity) as well as from an end user experience (verified and branded display vs anonymous phone number).
If you're a business / brand, interested in getting started with RCS, check out this page with more info on how to get started with RCS: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/messaging/channels/rcs
1. https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/30/google-acquires-jibe-mobil... 2. https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/netwo... 3. https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/netwo...

by hvs

1 subcomments

I'm so old and out-of-touch that all I could imagine this was about was an ancient version control system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_Control_System

by nixosbestos

0 subcomment

With the quality Google is pushing out these days, I wouldn't touch this with a 100ft pole.