Tom Van Pelt, Technical Director, GSMA

Today, we are celebrating a significant milestone in the evolution of messaging with the launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS) support on iPhone with the release of iOS 18. This launch is the culmination of years of collaboration across mobile operators, device manufacturers, and technology providers. It represents a step forward in bringing RCS’s feature-rich messaging to more users across both iOS and Android.

With RCS Universal Profile now available in iOS and on Android, users can take advantage of features like typing indicators, read receipts, high-quality media sharing, and improved group messaging when communicating with contacts on other platforms. Now users across both platforms can benefit from a richer, more reliable and seamless messaging experience than SMS and MMS.

While this is a major milestone, it is just the beginning. The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as interoperable end-to-end encryption. This will be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership. Additionally, users will benefit from stronger protections from scam, fraud, and other security threats. 

We look forward to continuing to collaborate across the mobile ecosystem to advance the RCS standard with interoperable end-to-end encryption to keep all RCS messages private and secure. 

We are excited to see what the future holds for this technology.