Red Mouse: Google Connecting the dots with RCS

As was expected among many players in Rich Communication industry, Google announced at MWC 2016 that they will provide ways for operators to accelerate the spread of RCS service across the globe. Two main hazards, i.e., complicated RCS technologies and interoperability, will be taken care of by Google. The cloud based RCS platform and RCS hub platform are available to operators for quick-and-easy launch of their RCS service.

Universal RCS profile

Google will define the Universal RCS profile which addresses basic features of RCS service including:

§ One to one chat

§ Group Chat

§ IMDN (delivered, displayed)

§ Contents Sharing (audio, video, photo)

In order to make this happen, Dozens of Global operators are partnered with Google in working for RCS:

§ America Movil (Mexico)

§ Bharti Airtel Ltd (India)

§ Deutsche Telekom (Dutch)

§ Etisalat (UAE)

§ Globe Telecom (the Philippines)

§ KPN (Dutch)

§ Millicom (Africa, Hispanic America*)

§ MTN (Africa)

§ Orange (merged with T-Mobile UK as a joint venture, EE)

§ PLAY (Poland)

§ Smart Communications (the Philippines)

§ Telenor Group (Norway)

§ TeliaSonera (Sweden, Finland)

§ Telstra (Australia)

§ TIM (Italy)

§ Turkcell (Turkey)

§ VimpelCom (Russia)

§ Vodafone (UK), Sprint (USA)

OTT vs Pre-Installation vs Embedded

Once the Universal RCS profile is specified with the help of global operators, it is expected that Google will introduce the OTT RCS client for Android OS. As opposed to the expectation that RCS client will be embedded in Android OS as a competitor to iMessage, the decision on whether it is pre-installed or embedded seems to be left to operators at least in the short term. In addition to the RCS client, Google will also provide the developers APIs which enables operators to flexibly customize their RCS clients with operator specific features on top of Universal RCS profile.

In the meantime, Google will keep doing their business with cloud based RCS service. It is a quick-and-easy way for operators to launch their RCS service. Even though using Google’s cloud-based RCS platform would be cost-efficient way, operators may worry that they can end up with being too leaning on Google.

Considerations

According to Mr. Stephen Sale, Research Director of Analysis Mason, Operators need to take the following strategical considerations:

§ How to distribute the RCS service worldwide: Even with Google’s help for Android OS, there still remains the worry that Apple won’t provide the RCS in iOS. Google may be able to put OTT RCS client with Universal RCS profile in the AppStore but even in this case, operators may not be able to provide operator specific RCS client for iOS.

§ Brand proposition: Some operators who already have their own RCS services with different brand name e.g., Sprint’s Messaging Plus, T-Mobile’s Advanced Messaging will need to figure out how to position its already existing RCS service against the soon-to-be-coming Google’s RCS client. Other operators who does not have RCS service yet will have to figure out how they can differentiate their RCS service against competitors.

§ Strategy Beyond messaging client: After the RCS service with Universal profile is stabilized, operators need to consider how they can monetize the service. As there are already lots of prevailing OTT competitions out there, operators have to figure out the feasible differentiator to get traction from users.

In order to gain traction of users, RCS service should be the ‘out-of-box’ service. It was already empirically proven that OTT RCS client can not compete with the existing OTT messaging services. Users needs be able to use the RCS service in the same way as SMS/MMS without even noticing they are using RCS. Without leveraging user experiences already familiar to users, operator’s RCS service won’t be able to regain the market. Having said that, operators need to provide pre-installed or embedded RCS clients.

Google Connecting the dots using RCS

Google does already have user's web context. They can indirectly figure out user’s profile like gender, age, interests, location, etc. by tracking down user’s behaviors on the web. By incorporating operators into their cloud based RCS service, Google can track down communication context of users as they do for web services. User’s communication context may include user’s communication behavior like how often they communicate, where they communicate, when they communicate, how long they communicate at a time and with whom they communicate. User’s communication history is important meaning to Google as it is closely related with user’s social relationships. Once user’s relationship can be figured out and if Google can connect the dots between web context and communication context of the same user, Google will be able to compete with the prevailing Social Network Services like Facebook.

In addition to this, operators may need to open the door of its subscribers database to Google for user authentication and authorization. Once subscriber’s database stored in the operator’s network is open to Google, they will be able to come to obtain the details of subscribers profile (of course) to an extent that is allowed by operators. Even though Google provides its own cloud-based RCS platform for free to operators, if they can obtain user's full context across web and mobile, it would be a trade much marginal to Google.