Rich Communications Suite (RCS) - good or bad?

It is noticed for one of the first time in the press (Computer Sweden) that GSMA has adopted a standard called Rich Communications Suite, or RCS for short. It is, according to the press release an extension of IMS. Something that is not that optimal for Internet Access.

What surprises me (or not in fact) is how little substance there is in the press release, the news articles and the Wikipedia Article. Look in the Wikipedia under Technical Features…

But, if one search for RCS and the names of some well known Internet Standards, one find in Google the following document, a PDF that is available at Ericsson website.

Interworking with internet communities
The network architecture accommodates the inclusion of gateways for
interconnect-ing with internet communities via theirnetwork-to-network
interfaces (NNI) – for example, Google Talk via XMPP (extensible
messaging and presence protocol) and IMPS via SIP/SIMPLE (SIP for
instant messaging and presence-leveraging extensions).

Oh boy! Even more IP based communication that is standardized in a way so that gateways are needed. I ask myself when the cellphone industry will officially let me run my XMPP client on my phone. Something I do already today thanks to the IM+ application.

Will this RCS fly, and become popular? Probably. Will it be cheap to run (i.e. with high revenue for the provider)? We’ll see. Only future can tell.