Standard text messaging through mobile carriers doesn’t exactly provide you with a ton of unique and helpful features. Group messaging through SMS is a joke, and there’s no way to see when the other person you’re chatting with has read your message or not. That’s why third-party messaging services are so popular. WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, iMessage and Facebook Messenger can do all these things and more, which is why Google, among a large number of other companies, have committed to a new standard called Rich Communications Services (RCS) that allows them to employ these features.
Jibe is a messaging platform based on the GSMA’s Rich Communication Services (RCS) standard, which kicked off back in 2007 as the telco sector’s answer to the looming threat of over-the-top (OTT) services.
Google is working with a laundry list of carriers to make RCS the standard for all Android devices. In a move announced today by the GSMA, which is a global consortium of 800 carriers, Google will help create a universal RCS client (currently named Jibe) that will be adopted by all the GSMA carriers.
An RCS-powered Android client could enable messaging features like group chat, high-resolution photo sharing, and read receipts. In the near future, video calling could also be supported by RCS. And of course, RCS would still support lower-tier standards like SMS and MMS as well.
This is of course great news for Android owners, as this now means the arrival of a more feature-rich texting platform is imminent. The Android client will be able to provide a consistent experience between all Android devices and all operators worldwide, and will be easily updatable through the Google Play Store.
Mobile operators will also be able to deploy their own infrastructure or have the option “to use the Jibe Platform from Google, which supports the universal RCS profile.” The press release adds:
The Jibe Platform includes a hosted cloud for individual operators to launch RCS services for all leading mobile operating systems and the Jibe Hub to interconnect operator RCS networks.
A Google Jibe website that explains a little more about Google’s initiative. It’s been rumored that Android N, the next major version of Google’s OS, could feature the debut of the messaging service, though we won’t know for sure until Google announces it in the coming months.
