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Comment by freitasm | Hacker News Reader

The article does not clearly state whether Android RCS and iOS RCS will work together.

Interoperability depends on how RCS is implemented behind the scenes. Just because iOS RCS is here doesn't mean you can assume your Android friends will receive your messages or vice versa.

iOS RCS relies on mobile operators's infrastructure, while Android RCS uses Google services.

You can see where this is going, right?

Unless your telco invests in infrastructure to support RCS in-network, those two ecosystems will not talk to each other.

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>iOS RCS relies on mobile operators's infrastructure, while Android RCS uses Google services.

1. I thought Android RCS (ie. google messages) only uses Google's infrastructure if the operator doesn't provide it?

2. Does Google's infrastructure interoperate with other mobile networks? In other words, if I'm on a network that provides its own RCS infrastructure, and I send a message to my friend who's on another network that doesn't provide RCS and therefore falls back on Google, what happens to the message? Does it get routed through my network, which routes it to google, or through google exclusively? If it's the former, it's plausible that RCS would work for iOS users, at least for users on networks that provide their own RCS infrastructure.

Correct. Where operators don't provide, Google will use their servers. So the fact one uses RCS on Android does not mean an iOS user will have access. It may be using Google's servers...

Today with Google Messages, the backend is always Jibe, which is interconnected worldwide. That's kinda the point.

The only question is whether Google managed to make the operator pay for it.

Hi, maybe this part is not entirely clear, but everywhere RCS was enabled by Apple, it works.

The thing is, outside China and a few other exceptions, there's no MNO infrastructure. It's Jibe or nothing.

Google seems to run several "catch all" domains to provision Google Messages with the IMS configuration in all countries where Jibe is running, for instance:

config.rcs.mnc${MNC}.mcc${MCC}.jibecloud.net

While the iOS client should default to 3GPP well-known configuration domains:

config.rcs.mnc${MNC}.mcc${MCC}.pub.3gppnetwork.org

But in almost all cases this should be Jibe endpoints too.

It doesn't work in New Zealand. Operators have not deployed the infrastructure needed for it.

Again, there's no operator deployed infrastructure, it's Jibe, which works in NZ since 2020 like in most of the world:

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=97&topicid=275...

I like how you are replying to me with my own website.

Here is some interesting comment from a telco staff https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=76&topicid=315...

What I meant is, interoperability between iOS RCS and Android RCS won't work until telcos deploy their own servers and Google fallback to those.

And again, telcos don't deploy servers. The backend is provided by Jibe, it's already running.

The iOS 18 RCS client provisioned in the US, UK, Spain, Germany, ... connects to Jibe and can send messages to Android devices running Google Messages.

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