RCS - Not what you might think

Some of us think RCS stands for Revision Control System, one of the fathers of all revision control systems that programmers use. I the other day found out from Ericsson that it also can stand for Rich Communications Suite. After reading a paper describing it, I am even more confused.

This is a quote from that very document:

The open handset platforms and the possibility for diverse set of RCS Clients follow a
similar innovation approach as is widely used on the internet today. The differentiator
is mainly that the RCS Initiative is built of standardized, interoperable components.

My first rection was, so the Internet is not based on standardized interoperable components?, but another way of interpreting is that Internet access from cellphones today is built into phones that normally are not open architectures. Although more and more of them are open. One can even claim that Apple with its Developer Package for the iPhone is an open platform. But even more open seems the Android from Google be.

But that this RCS should be more open and built with standardized components than Internet, well, that seems to be an exaggeration. There are other interesting statements found in this spec as well, such as this about email and messaging:

The RCS allows sustaining messaging pricing plans. If all messaging goes to
internet based services (e.g., email or IM such as Skype, MSN, Google Talk) all
messaging revenues are generated by external service providers.

Are we having fun yet?