Tuesday 21 July, 2026
The Rich Communication Services (RCS) Universal Profile 4.1 has now been published. This specification defines the service experience and user experience for the features that are part of RCS and it relies on the technical enablers that are defined in other RCS-related specifications some of which are updated to support the enhancements brought as part of this new Universal Profile version and are covered on this page.
The major step forward covered by these latest RCS specifications is that they define alternative technical underpinnings for the transport of messages and the related signalling which should improve stability and resource usage both on the device and in the network. Next to that, the new release covers the sharing of user profiles in 1-to-1 and Group Chat conversations, allowing recipients to more easily identify the contact that they are communicating with through their name and picture instead of their telephone number. This will come with precautions both to restrict sharing and guarantee privacy and to avoid misuse. Finally, the release brings enhancements to the end-to-end encryption capabilities to capture the lessons learnt from initial interoperability testing.
