No need to wait for carriers just try making something people want to use.
I'm caught up on rcs, I suppose it's an improvement over sms, but what isn't? It's not an improvement over email, or what's app or signal.
The irony is thick here. "Who uses the open, standard protocol for anything but authenticating proprietary, locked-in services competing on network effects?"
The whole point is to make it so the standard thing that everyone has by default doesn't suck as much, so we don't need to make messaging service decisions based on network effects and lock-in.
SMS has a strong network effect thanks to carriers wanting to charge you per message but basically nothing else going for it.
According to any kind of statistics - 100s of millions of people on the world. Yes, still. Please do look outside the bubble.
It's the same reason that I'll never switch from email to slack.
Right now I have iMessage, Snapchat, SMS, Messenger, GroupMe, Email, Discord and Slack along with a bunch of apps with chat as a feature. I have been caused no harm whatsoever by this setup except that my SO has a way to fill my notification screen when they’re feeling obnoxious.
How is that possibly not "harm"??
I do.