Comment by eigenvector | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eigenvector | Hacker News Reader

RCS is an improvement to SMS but it does not address the core limitations: it is owned and controlled by carriers, so your ability to contact someone is entirely dependent on that user's carrier. It is tied to a single, physical device. WhatsApp shot to popularity because it was the opposite of SMS: an entirely over-the-top service that everyone could use, on any platform, without the consent, extra billing or buggy implementation of their carrier. As an app, it could be installed on the widest imaginable array of devices - including the obsolete, crappy ones that most of the people on Earth use - without OS updates.

I don't need stickers or Google Assistant. Those things are nice, but they're not what I need. What I need is the ability to contact anyone, anywhere without having to wonder whether it's going to work when I hit 'send'. Hi Bob, did you get my photo? Sorry, it didn't go through, Bob's carrier in Bangladesh has set limits on photo size and mine was too big. I tried to send Raj a message, but he recently got an iPhone and my RCS message sent as SMS and his carrier blocks international SMS messages.

WhatsApp & FB Messenger (and to a lesser extent iMessage) are successful because they reduce the thousands of carriers and hundreds of countries in the world to a single, seamless service. RCS is taking us back to the days where a single obstructionist carrier (remember lots of carriers are owned or controlled by governments) can screw things up for all of their users. WhatsApp et al showcased the ability of the Internet to make the world a smaller place.

I don't Google understands how big or complex the world really is.

Frankly, I'd rather have a messaging system controlled by carriers but distributed among all of them (like SMS and RCS) than a messaging system fully controlled by a single company like Whatsapp, Telegram, Allo, iMessages and so on.

I can still switch carriers and be able to communicate with my friends.

The only issue I have with SMS is that it costs money when I'm not in my home country.

Re. being able to switch carriers and still communicate, what happens when you travel and (temporarily) get a local SIM? Are you suddenly messaging all your existing contacts from an unrecognized foreign number "Hi, it's John, this is my temporary Thai number..." and then relying on that message not getting binned by some spam algorithm? What prevents carriers from charging extra for RCS messages originating abroad?

In France we get to keep our phone number when we switch operators.

Travel is an issue yes, but I think it's worth it to have a truly decentralized system.

At a conceptual level, it does have many advantages. For one thing, it's just part of your phone, you never have to install anything. You don't have to market it to anyone, it just automagically rolls out through the world as people buy new devices and carriers adopt it.

But I'm concerned that the intransigence of carriers, especially those that operate in non-competitive environments, will get in the way of rolling it out properly and effectively.

RCS should be backwards compatible, so if the carrier is blocking it, the users simply see a normal SMS message.

> what happens when you travel and (temporarily) get a local SIM?

The real fix would be sensible roaming charges so you don't need to.

That would seem to be less likely than getting every carrier to implement RCS.

It happened in the US long ago for the most part. I often use a tower that is run by someone other than my carrier, but everything just works. This has been the case so long that I can't recall when the last time anyone I know had to think about roaming.

More recently (since 2015) I get free text and data (but not voice) in more than 100 countries around the world. Some countries include voice as well. In short it is coming, if you don't have it ask your carrier why. (odds are it is regulations so get after your representatives and tell them to stop it or you will vote for someone who will)

Why are you changing your number just because you switch carriers?

Because in my example you're traveling to a different country.

Isn't it the same with Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, etc.? Those are all tied to your phone number.

With Telegram you can change the phone number and keep all the messages and contacts. It's also possible with Whatsapp, but with some limitations.

> Frankly, I'd rather have a messaging system controlled by carriers but distributed among all of them (like SMS and RCS) than a messaging system fully controlled by a single company like Whatsapp, Telegram, Allo, iMessages and so on.

I think that's true in general, but I don't mind Signal because it's a nonprofit and pushing the technology forward.

The problem is that carriers are terrible at this kind of thing. For example, here in Canada, Rogers, Fido and Bell support RCS.

Rogers/Fido use Google's Jibe infrastructure, but Bell uses Samsung infrastructure.

The result is that if you're on Fido, you can't send text messages using RCS to your contacts on Bell because there's no interoperability between their infrastructure and Jibe. How insane is that?

Whatsapp relies on a phone number for account activation though, doesn't it?

And if you lose that phone number and phone, you need to get a new whatsapp number. I have to keep my SIM from New Zealand with me so that when I get a new phone I can activate Whatsapp again.

You can migrate your Whatsapp account between different phone numbers. I've done this with SIMs from different countries.

WhatsApp uses your phone number as your "ID" but your message history and contacts can be migrated to a new device or number. So there is a concept of an account beyond just your current phone number but it's not exposed to the user directly.

WhatsApp, nothing more than another internet messaging app that requires data, shot to popularity because it fooled users into thinking it was somehow an SMS client because it used phone number as account.

Here in Italy, it shot to popularity because it was "free unlimited SMS for everybody".

Also "can send images & shit for the same price".

No, it shot to popularity because it functioned exactly like SMS messaging, except that messages were free. "Fooled users" is an incredibly mean-spirited way of looking at it - iMessage certainly "fools users" into thinking it is SMS far more. Users care about the result, not the method used.

Right.

So basically it works, it was $1/year, it allowed to text, send images and send videos and one only needed to know someone's existing identifier (phone number) to connect to them.

Who would have thought that making something that works would eat messaging?!

No, because it was (and probably still is) the only messaging app that works with feature phones.

> No, because it was (and probably still is) the only messaging app that works with feature phones.

Sadly, Facebook has since dropped feature phone support to support their flanking maneuver on Snapchat (Instagram on the other flank). Instead of keeping WhatsApp simple and admitting it was feature-complete, the grand plan seems to be "copy features from Snap, and drop feature phones that can't keep up".

> without having to wonder whether it's going to work when I hit 'send'. Hi Bob, did you get my photo? Sorry, it didn't go through, Bob's carrier in Bangladesh has set limits on photo size and mine was too big.

Pretty sure you'll know prior to sending whether Bob is able to receive the message by just seeing the message is being sent by RCS.

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