Rich Communication Services
Introduction
Rich Communication Suite (RCS) is a joint industry effort aiming to speed up the evolution of mobile phone communication towards rich communication.
According to the press release, from the end-user point of view RCS would enable communication such as |instant messaging, video sharing and buddy lists. These capabilities would be available on any type of devices using an open communication between devices and networks. Main features of RCS are:
- Enhanced Phonebook, with service capabilities and presence enhanced contacts information
- Enhanced Messaging, which enables a large variety of messaging options including chat and messaging history
- Enriched Call, which enables multimedia content sharing during a voice call
Interoperability between different terminal vendor RCS clients and RCS service interworking between operators are the key aims of RCS Initiative.
Participants of RCS Initiative
Companies behind RCS are Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.
Technical features
RCS leverages the various existing standards, thus RCS takes on board different services defined by e.g. 3GPP and OMA and combines them with the Enhanced Phonebook. This allows the service capabilities as well as presence information of the different recipients to be shown in the terminal phonebook application.
RCS reuses the capabilities of 3GPP specified IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) core system as the underlying service platform taking care of issues such as authentication, authorization, registration, charging and routing.
The following standardized services are a part of RCS concept:
Status
According to the RCS press release, by February 2008 the RCS Initiative has defined a core feature set, developed reference implementations of the services and conducted interoperability testing in multi-vendor environment. The intention is to have interoperable rich communication services available in 2008.
RCS Initiative demonstrated interoperability of the RCS compatible terminals at the Barcelona 3GSM exhibition 2008. RCS Initiative also announced an RCS interoperability demo at IMS World Forum 2008 in Paris.