FAQs

RCS-e is the latest version of Rich Communication Suite (RCS) which will enable mobile phone end users to use instant messaging (IM), live video sharing and file share across any mobile phone on any network operator. For additional information, please refer to the RCS-e specification on this website.

joyn is the global consumer facing brand for RCS-e services that will be used by operators. For additional information, please go to www.joynus.com

The key benefits of joyn for the end user are;

• Service Discovery displays the services available to be used for any particular contact in the user's address book.
• joyn is interoperable between mobile operators, which enables the end user to communicate and be connected with anyone.
• joyn is either available natively in the mobile phone or can be downloaded as an app - without the need for passwords or creating a special account.

RCS-e service features are already proven to be of value to end-users with similar services in the marketplace. Instant real time communications and sharing are a natural evolution of person-to-person messaging.

There are a number of different target market segments for RCS-e including:

• Consumers who wish to stay in touch with friends and family, and capture and exchange rich media with them as events happen. The youth demographic is particularly attracted to the RCS-e proposition.
• Business users who need to exchange multimedia documents and work collaboratively with colleagues, as well as stay connected with friends and family

RCS is not just a suite of services - it is a platform for all future communications in an IP world. VoLTE and RCS will share the same IMS investment. The intrinsic capability of IMS means that it enables the key differentiators of future Voice and Messaging services for operators.

A number of mobile operators, including the five major mobile operator groups (Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica and Vodafone) are gearing-up to launch rich communications services based on RCS-e in Europe and Asia. The first RCS-e launch will be in the summer of 2012 in Spain (Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone), followed by Germany (Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica/O2 and Vodafone), Italy (Telecom Italia and Vodafone), France (Orange and SFR) and Korea (SKT, KT and LG U+) all of which will launch interoperable services during 2012. Other rich communications launches are planned for 2012 in Europe, North America and Asia.

RCS is one of the GSMA's key Programmes for 2012/13. The RCS Programme has now shifted to 'Go to Market' activities. It is now focussed on accelerating the adoption of rich communications services through simplifying its implementation. The mission is to ensure there is sufficient implementation of interoperable rich communications services by operators in order to provide a compelling service with both domestic and international interoperability to a broad number of end users. The RCS Programme includes mobile network operators, infrastructure and device vendors as well as application developers.

The vision for RCS-e, as part of the GSMA's Connected Life vision, is to allow end users to create their own personal community and share content in real time using their mobile phone on any mobile network.

Mobile phones will be available for initial commercial deployment from the summer, 2012. RCS-e development activities are supported by 9 of the top 10 handset vendors, participating in technical trials and market pilots with precommercial versions of RCS-e clients. The handset industry is well positioned to handle rapid mass-market rollouts of compatible handsets. Additionally, downloadable RCS-e clients have been developed for a wide range of mobile handset platforms including iPhone, Android, Windows Phone and Symbian.

The market opportunity is huge, since this is an evolutionary service aimed at the billions of mobile voice and text users. Consumers around the world have suffered from a fragmentation of communication services, and RCS-e is about offering a ubiquitous, interoperable service by leveraging the investments made in the high-speed data networks by operators.

RCS-e brings mobile operators the opportunity to leverage key assets and capabilities to deliver high quality and innovative communications services. These developments will strengthen their relationship with their customers and add the ability to increase the revenue opportunity from advanced personal communications by offering services consumers really want.

No. SMS and MMS are good examples of successful service enablers that have thrived on the basis of interoperability whilst encouraging a proliferation of differentiated value added services. RCS-e provides core functionality enabling application development and differentiation, based on underlying interoperability and compatibility, such as instant messaging. Interoperability ensures that core RCS-e service features will operate seamlessly between users whichever operator they belong to, whatever mobile phone they have.

The compelling strapline for RCS-e is 'It's just there and it just works'. RCS-e gives end-users the immediate opportunity to communicate with others in a variety of ways, without requiring installation, registration, etc. Furthermore, rich communications services will boast levels of security and QoS that only operators can provide, and there will be no 'closed community' limitations. In other words, RCS-e will be available to all mobile operator subscribers, independent of handset, and users will be made aware of an address book contact's service capability. RCS-e provides end-users with a frictionless and trustworthy experience that can be enjoyed across networks and borders. Only operators are capable of delivering such a service, and it is what todays end-users have come to expect.

Both operator and GSMA members of the RCS Programme Team welcome the opportunity to assist other operators in their efforts to decide to commit to RCS-e. Through documentation, content, face-to-face sessions, workshops, C-level briefings, live demos, and other methods, the RCS Team is equipped to inform and convince. Operators considering RCS-e should not hesitate to contact the RCS Programme Team, and we look forward to working with you.

RCS-e services require an IP-Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) platform, as specified by the 3GPP and adopted by major industry standardization bodies for mobile and fixed networks.

Industry dynamics have dramatically changed, and the opportunity (and consequences) for operators is much higher. With RCS, operators have taken a much more collaborative approach with each other, as well as with other members of the ecosystem. By focusing on their strengths like interoperability, QoS, charging, etc. the operators have been able to establish a common framework that will be leveraged by third parties and enjoyed by end-users. Because of increasing competition and end user expectations for secure, reliableand more engaging communications, the operators have approached rich communications with a spirit of partnership, and this will lead to success.

The RCS Programme Leadership Team has been careful to focus specifically on providing developers with a communications 'toolkit' which can be leveraged via standard APIs to deliver truly rich communications. Through the exposure of these standard APIs and the guarantee of maximum reach through interoperability, developers will have a compelling opportunity to lead in innovation. Operators are sticking to what they do best - features definition, IOT, QoS, Charging, etc. and relying upon developers to deliver upon the promise of RCS. Unlike previous instances, operators are aware of their advantages and limitations and cognizant that, when provided enablers, third-parties are the most successful sources of innovation.

Yes, downloadable clients that work on Android Versions 2.2 and above and iOS versions 4.x and above are available.

With increasingly shorter handset replacement cycles RCS-e could become highly penetrated within 2-3 years of launch. If mobile operators act now to deploy RCS-e they will be far better positioned to react to the new competitive landscape that will accompany IP interconnect than if they did nothing.

It is technically possible that integrations between RCS-e and OTT apps can be achieved, indeed example demonstrations from a number of vendors have shown this to be possible. Interconnect between RCS-e services and OTT apps will be dependent on commercial agreements between operators and OTT service providers, and will be based on similar terms and conditions as interconnect between RCS-e operators.

The initial service scope includes one-to-one and one-to-many IM, file share (as a standalone or within a chat session), video sharing within a voice call, and service capability discovery. The RCS team recently identified 50+ new features or enhancements, and these are currently being reviewed and prioritized for inclusion in the RCS-e 2.0 spec. Features with great demand across the RCS Programme are location, centralized messaging and store/forward, centralized address book (across a variety of mobile phones), and HD voice (including harmonization with VOLTE). Much of the innovation in rich communications, however, will come from thirdparty developers working with RCS-e APIs to launch new communications services addressing specific segments or markets.

Each of the operators represented on the RCS Programme Leadership Team (i.e. Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, Telecom Italia, and Vodafone) has received individual commitments from most of the key handset OEMs, and two of these organizations have confirmed they will do firmware updates to turn existing handsets into RCS-e enabled phones. Please see the Downloadable app section in this document for further information on downloadable clients. On the operator front, a number of other operators in Europe and Asia have recently announced their commitment to launch RCS-e to the RCS Programme, and the spec is currently under review by many others.

The downloadable clients require configuration settings sent by the mobile operators networks at set-up. Therefore it is not currently possible to download the client software and have it function over WiFi alone. However this is being worked on.

The app developed for GSMA will be free to consumers. Mobile operators will pay the developer a fee per active user based on rates agreed with GSMA. The client is capable of functioning with every mobile operator's RCS-e compliant infrastructure but in practise will only work if a commercial agreement is in place between the operator and the developer.

The downloadable client follows the RCS-e V1.2.1 specification. An accredited joyn iOS client is undergoing testing but is not available at this time. Operators wishing to provide access to joyn services to their customers on their existing Android or Apple mobile phones can sign up to the program with the developer (WIT Software) and WIT will make the app available to their customers.

We are very committed to success in open market mobile phones. The three elements OEMs tell us they need are:

• Standard back-end implementation by the operators.
• Simplified specification such that there is very little room for variants/options.
• Independent test facilities.

We are working hard to ensure the first by ensuring all new networks are 'accredited' or tested using mobile phones which have been proven to pass on previously accredited networks. The specification is really pretty simple except for provisioning, where 3 methods are allowed. We are working to see if we can reduce this in the next version. We are currently working on sourcing independent test facilities for both open market and operator-variant mobile phones.

An RCS-e client could be developed to work on IMS registered IP-phones and interworking would be possible if the networks are interconnected but the client developed by WIT on behalf of GSMA will not run on those devices.

It is intended that RCS will be built-in to future feature phones, so that once current users replace their phones they will have access to RCS services. The users of many legacy smartphones will be able to download RCS clients and apps to enable them to access RCS services too.

RCS-e V 1.2 does not contain that functionality. This is a client side implementation that requires Presence.

RCS-e is targeting a much bigger community of users than OTT apps. It is designed to be appealing to and useable by, the mass market, not just tech savvy early adopters and users of smartphones. With 9 out of 10 handset vendors planning to implement RCS-e in their future products, RCS-e will work across most future mobile phones and networks, and potentially with all users in their address book. However, to deliver on this promise all operators in a particular market must offer the service therefore the GSMA is working on a country by country basis to encourage all operators to launch interoperable rich communications services.

On the contrary, the current feature set e.g. 1-to-1 and group chat, image and file sharing of RCS-e is competitive with most OTT services. Furthermore, RCS-e also offers the unique benefits of offering video, image and file share in-call, so that users do not have to switch applications to access these services. RCS-e also offers service capability discovery which means that the user can be confident that if they see a service is offered then they can be sure it will work. Operators can position their RCS-e services as easier to discover, install, set-up and use and can offer a secure, reliable and private user experience.

The key differentiator for RCS-e, and therefore its value to the consumer, is that these services when natively integrated in the mobile phone or via a downloadable app mean the user experience requires no intervention from the user - 'it's just there' - and that only relevant and available services are offered to the user thanks to dynamic capability discovery - 'it just works'. Furthermore, these services will be available on, and work between, a wide range of mobile phones from feature phones to smartphones.

The opportunity for the operator is to retain its relevance as the primary provider of personal communications services to its customers and re-invigorate its core communications products by innovating and differentiating vs. OTT players with ease of use, ubiquity, interoperability, privacy and QoS. New, revenue generating, services can be developed on the RCS-e platform and will be discoverable in the right place, in the right context.

RCS-e requires a core IMS solution for entry level services (e.g. peer to peer messaging). A number of additional options can be proposed by any of the RCS infrastructure vendors.

There are many ways in which RCS-e based services can be monetised: charging customers per event for certain services, bundling services into daily, weekly or monthly subscription packages or charging explicitly for data volumes consumed. Each operator will choose its approach to meet the needs and expectations of its customers and market conditions. In some cases third party service providers could be charged for the use of Rich Communications capabilities e.g. video share or file share in the delivery of their specific services, such as in gaming applications or to enrich customer care services.

RCS-e offers significant opportunities to enrich the consumer's communications experience now, encouraging them to communicate more and helping to strengthen the mobile operator's relationship with them. Maintaining the mobile operators relevance as the primary provider of communication services will become even more important as competition shifts from the messaging market to the far more valuable voice market. Operators need to act now in order to prepare themselves to effectively compete with 3rd party service providers who will be able to offer even more competitive mobile VoIP services once high bandwidth, low latency, LTE networks are introduced.

The cost and time to implement RCS-e is very dependent on a number of factors, in particular the current size and status of the operator's network. Although RCS-e requires IMS for full deployment there are a number of architectural options that can be employed to achieve RCS-e deployment without major upfront investments or complex network integrations. The first commercial RCS-e networks have been deployed within less than 9 months. It can be assumed that given the ecosystem experience and knowledge acquired during these initial deployments, that future implementations should be much faster.

The market demand for these types of products is best demonstrated by the popularity of several OTT types of services. With the advent of all-IP networks and greater penetration of smartphones, demand for richer communications will grow, yet only operators are able deliver quality, secure services whose scope is not limited to a specific OEM or OS universe. Complementing this will be service capability, which will guarantee that end-users will not have a 'trial and error' experience when attempting to communicate with address book contacts.

The RCS team has approached rich communications from a standards perspective, and the focus of the effort has been to create a specification that details an 'enabling foundation' upon which third-parties can build innovative and feature-rich communications products and services. The GSMA's approach to rich communications has been to provide and promote (including the use of a Service Mark - joyn) a common set of tools to developers, OEMs, etc. The rich communications UI experience can be made different across networks and mobile phones, but retains key elements of interoperable capabilities which will be universally enjoyed by subscribers. Furthermore, GSMA is working with OMA and key vendors to define the technical specification.