So...hold up. I want to see if I'm reading this wrong. No support for RCS outside of the US? Or no support for RCS *on Apple devices yet* outside of the US?
If the latter, I can understand that. But if the former....this kind of contradicts Google's entire argument for how Apple's lack of RCS support was hamstringing people texting between Apple/Google devices.
This is interesting. Is Apple not going to support MVNOs at all or just in the early betas? If only working on the Big 3 in the US, the real test once the feature launches is can a Google RCS Android phone send to an iPhone on a supported carrier if the Android phone is not on a supported carrier (i.e. Pixel on Mint Mobile sending to an iPhone on Verizon). I don’t know enough about the standard or Apple’s implementation to know how well this will cooperate with Google’s.
So this is the current situation:
Apple does not provide their own Jibe Service equivalent, they require operators to provide the RCS service endpoints (as defined in the spec), just like they do with e.g. MMS.
Years ago Google did the same, but carriers in the US were very slow to spin up Universal Profile / interconnected RCS hubs so they started providing a generic Jibe fallback as part of Google Messages (e.g. if your carrier has no RCS support, they take over and throw you on Jibe so every single Google Messages user gets access to RCS, no matter which carrier. If your carrier supports RCS, the Google Messages app uses that first and foremost).
This kind of killed all chances at RCS being properly implemented at the carrier level, because Google ate their cake with their generic fallback method which enabled carriers to be lazy (no real money in RCS, so slow adoption and eventually most carriers just gave up). Some carriers, namely the big 3 in the US, did at least partner with Jibe and provide endpoints that essentially forward traffic to the Jibe Service (so they have a RCS endpoints that does nothing except link to Jibe, zero requirement on their end).
Now we‘re in 2024, Apple pushes out support for RCS at the carrier level. There is no Apple-Jibe-Competitor that kicks in when your provider doesn‘t provide RCS functionality (or at the very least a Jibe link-up endpoint). The laziness of carriers becomes very apparent and public, probably forcing most of them to at least partner with Jibe for their endpoints.
The beta only seems to have the 3 big US carriers set up for RCS, could be partially due to Apple probably having the most discourse with these 3. Others can easily get their carrier profile updated to include their own RCS setup, it‘s just a matter of getting it done, which carriers are notoriously bad in.
Could be that we‘re looking at a fall launch for most carriers with a ready to go RCS setup, or worse, staggered all throughout the next year until carriers get their asses together and provide updated profiles or Apple says „nvm“ and pushes out a generic RCS setup that also links up to Jibe (unlikely, would play into Googles hands too much).
