This is a major development—given the combined efforts of Google and the mobile networks, RCS will be the fastest deployed messaging technology of all time.

One thing that would certainly be a game-changer would be some form of standardized RCS end-to-end encryption that allows secure messages to be sent outside Google Messages.

The thinking behind RCS was to deliver a best of both worlds solution—the cross-platform ubiquity of SMS with the functionality of WhatsApp and iMessage, but built right into the core network infrastructure

Rich Communication Services is a reinvention of cellular messaging, a halfway house between the SMS ecosystem run by network operators and platforms like WhatsApp and iMessage. The wide-scale RCS rollout is being driven by Google as Android’s iMessage equivalent