The other week, I wrote a post on how Rich Communication Suite (RCS) is finally coming into fruition and promising to revolutionize the text messaging experience. In this second post, I’ll explore this new service further by addressing some questions I commonly receive in my customer work and sharing some best practices I’ve honed recently.

RCS will make our texting better with rich messages and deeper real-time experiences with the people we’re texting, and Syniverse has been at the forefront of this and helping our customers roll out this service to consumers. Specifically, in my role as a Principal Solutions Engineer, I’ve been in the thick of helping customers prepare for new RCS use cases and leading some of our implementations. In the course of this, I’ve gotten a number of questions from customers and others about what to expect with RCS, how we’ll adapt to it, and how hub providers like Syniverse will play a role with this service now and in the future.

Below are condensed answers to these that I hope will help further explain how this service will transform messaging.

• What does Enterprise RCS mean to my Enterprise Short Message Service (SMS) channel, which is utilized around the globe to communicate to mobile handsets?
  It means mobile communication is alive, well, and advancing. More and more consumers use their mobile every day to gain knowledge from enterprises. If an enterprise is currently engaged with consumers via application to person (A2P) SMS, the leap to Enterprise RCS should be an easy one.
• Will we be able to simply jump from Enterprise SMS to RCS?
  No, it will likely not be a clean cut. Although internet-of-things chat applications for person to person (P2P) messaging – such as WeChat, Line, and Facebook Messenger – are helping consumers adapt, Enterprise RCS and A2P SMS are expected to overlap for some time.
• How will we be able to migrate our Enterprise SMS base to Enterprise RCS?
  Migrating an A2P SMS subscriber base to an Enterprise RCS environment could be as easy as simply adding a link into an A2P SMS message. A link can act as a catalyst to either download or awaken an RCS client. Migrating may also be as simple as device detection to determine an RCS client. In any case, once an enterprise has an open RCS pathway, migration from A2P SMS is just a matter of steps.
• Will Enterprise RCS grow as quickly as A2P SMS did in the ‘90s, and will it pave the way for a new communication standard?
  Enterprise RCS is looking to have a bright future. According to the GSMA: “Consumers are overwhelmingly excited about what RCS has to offer. Nearly 80% of consumers find RCS appealing and over 70% say RCS would make them more likely to want to communicate with a brand.” This should get enterprises excited. With the expectation of a continuously growing smartphone consumer base, with RCS adoption already happening in 17 countries today, and with the number of network interconnects expected to exceed 140 by the end of 2018, GSMA Intelligence estimates that 350 million consumers will have RCS this year, and Gartner expects that, by 2020, 85 percent of interactions will take place without involving a human agent.

Do you have any questions you would add to these? If so, please leave them in the comments section below. I’d love to address them.

We at Syniverse continue to look forward to continuing to help our customers unlock the capabilities of RCS, and continuing with this, in my next post I’ll discuss some of the most important challenges that the mobile industry must tackle next to make the most of RCS.

Rick Carlson( Lead Manager of Solutions Engineering - Americas )

Lead Manager of Solutions Engineering, Rick Carlson oversees a team of Solutions Engineers providing global enterprise solutions to customers based in the Americas. Since first joining Syniverse, in 2013, Rick has worked consistently in the Solutions Engineering team initially as a Sr. Solutions Engineer working with enterprises and mobile operators alike, then as a Principal Solutions Engineer focusing on the Syniverse Enterprise messaging solutions and working with some of the largest enterprises in the world. Rick has been in the mobile industry for 30 years, starting with a 15-year career at AT&T, ranging from front line customer service roles, product marketing, customer and business retention management, and mobile network operator relations. Rick resides in North Georgia USA, and he holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Morehead State University in Kentucky.