What happens to operators who have deployed RCS already and sunk millions into it?

Us humans are creatures of habit. Sure a few of us like pushing the envelope, always trying out news things at the bleeding edge, but the huge majority of us enjoy their comforts, what’s already known and proven. But then along comes a game changer to really shift things up a gear, something that quite literally grabs the attention of billions of people in a smooth, comfortable manner. Take SMS, the humble text message. 

Born in 1992, SMS grew rather by accident grew to be a hugely successful two-way means of communication that captured the trust of a generation SMS was originally conceived as a one-way channel for mobile operators to update their subscribers about network activities such as planned system downtime but several years later, started to take hold as a two-way P2P (person-to-person) means of communication. About 20 years ago marketeers got with the idea of using it for one-way A2P (application-to-person, B2C and B2B in plain language) marketing uses and the rest is history. 

?You could be forgiven for thinking RCS was the new kid on the block but the concepts of it has been around for a decade.

A2P SMS is easily understood and with 98% of successfully delivered messages actually being read, it just works. Organisations of all types, shapes and sizes globally use it heavily for delivering marketing, transactional and informative content to their customers and indeed potential customers. Transaction volumes are increasing year-on-year and as this strange year of 2020 has unfolded, ever more use cases for it have come to the fore.

SMS undoubtedly sits astride the A2P mobile engagement throne but there have been pretenders to it over the years. SMS is all a bit dull, flat and grey. Being visual creatures, introducing a (particularly attractive) visual component to something really grabs our attention. After getting off to a cautious start in 2001, Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) built up a head of steam and it wasn’t long before people were talking about the total demise of SMS in its favour. Melding the pull of pictures with the world of text messaging (MMS) should have created something unassailable but a host of technical limitations and commercial challenges meant this was not to be. SMS lived to see another day. 

The P2P side of communications has not been as forgiving to SMS though. Chat apps like WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber and Telegram have decimated Voice and P2P SMS revenues for mobile operators globally and the internet giants use operator’s network infrastructure to push through valuable advertising to people without paying operators a cent.

Google recently threw a further curveball at operators who have already deployed RCS by announcing they are essentially going all in with their own Android Messages. So, what happens to operators who have deployed RCS already and sunk millions into it?

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