The RCS Global Common Core Service Description Document RCCC.61 that details how the features in the Common Core should be implemented is currently under-going a revision by the Global Functional Requirements Group. The Group, chaired by Thomas Welzel of Deutsche Telekom, is revising the specification in order to foster interoperability and reduce testing times.
The document covers native and downloadable application-based implementations of the Common Core release, reflecting user requirements gathered as a result of feature prioritisation by Mobile Network Operators and defined by the Global Functional Requirements Group (GFRG). The current version, published in July 2014, was based on the RCS 5.2 technical specification. The revisions to the Service Description Document, which were agreed by the IP Communications Leadership Team at its meeting in Madrid in November 2014, will include revising the document to align with the technical convergence delivered in the RCS 5.3 specification.
A survey of all registered members of the Global Functional Requirements Group was carried out in October last year to assess whether the document met global operators requirements. The consensus was that while the features addressed represented the priority services for operators globally, the service descriptions themselves required amendment to focus on event flow and interoperability issues and less on the User Interface or ‘look and feel’ of the applications. This would be more appropriately covered in a specification sent by an individual operator or group of operators when ordering devices (e.g. the joyn specifications). Therefore the features covered in the Global Common Core; Provisioning, Capability discovery, 1 to 1 and group chat, file transfer, audio messaging, multi-device messaging, IP voice and video calling and in-call services will be unchanged but the service descriptions themselves will focus on the requirements for service development and interoperability.
The Global Common Core will form a set of documents supporting Operators and handset manufacturers, comprising: the RCS specification RCC07 providing technical specification foundations; the Global Common Core addressing implementation to support interoperability in the middle; and individual Operator device feature specifications (or the joyn specifications for operators adopting joyn) defining the look and feel of the feature. The Global Common Core features are not mandatory to implement, but will form the basis for future Open Market devices as well be being implemented by most operator implementations.
RCC61 version 2 is expected to be published along with the RCC07 version RCS 5.3 in March 2015.