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AT&T has pledged whole-hearted support for Google’s RCS (Rich Communicate Services) on Android devices. With this partnership, Google Messages will be the default messaging app on all AT&T Android phones in the US. This follows a similar commitment from T-Mobile in March, making messaging a more consistent experience for Android users. Verizon is yet to get on board, though.
AT&T finally embraces RCS wholeheartedly
RCS is a modern messaging standard and a massive upgrade to age-old SMS and MMS technologies. It brings features like read receipts, typing inductor, support for larger files, better group chats, end-to-end encryption, and many more to your phone’s messaging app. As you may have guessed, RCS requires an internet connection to work. But even if you’re offline, your messages will still go through as SMS or MMS. So your communication won’t be cut when there’s no internet, something that instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram don’t offer.
Google has been long trying to make RCS the default messaging system on Android devices. But despite its best efforts, US wireless carriers never committed to this system wholeheartedly. In October 2019, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint (which merged with T-Mobile in 2020) formed a consortium and launched a joint venture called the Cross-Carrier Messaging Initiative (CCMI) to improve the messaging experience for mobile users. However, years later, nothing has materialized out of it.
Meanwhile, Google took matters into its own hands and integrated RCS into its Messages app, which comes pre-installed on most Android devices around the world. It then started calling on carriers for full-fledged RCS support through Messages, which is finally coming. Shortly after T-Mobile committed to it, AT&T joined the bandwagon too. Verizon is sticking to its own RCS solution with a separate app, but we hope it would also adopt the more universal standard and help make messaging on Android more consistent.
RCS is still missing on iPhones
Unfortunately, carrier support will only improve the messaging experience in the Android space. Cross-platform messaging between Android devices and iPhones is still a mess. That’s because Apple doesn’t support RCS on iPhones. Messages sent from an Android device to an iPhone go through as SMS and are notably distinguished in the iMessage app using “green bubbles”. Messages sent from other iPhones appear in “blue bubbles”. Despite Google repeatedly taking digs at the company publicly, Apple has shown no signs of fixing this mess. It recently debuted iOS 17 without RCS support.