To start with I would like you to imagine that you are making a call to
your friend. While conversing with him he tells you about the new song he is
currently listening. He eulogises the song so much that you want to listen to it
right away. you ask your friend to send you the song as a sound file. Since he
is talking to you he cannot send the file to you immediately. Either he would
have to disconnect the call, send you an audio MMS or he would have to connect
to internet and send it through email. But he can send it as an MMS only if he
has this service activated. Even if he has MMS activated, you may not have. In
that case the only option you have is to receive it through email which might
take much longer than you wished for. Quite a mood dampener in this express
world!!
Here comes Rich Communication Suite
(RCS) for your rescue. It's a new concept in the telecom world which makes
mobile communication extremely friendly and gives it plenty of new features. Here
we would talk about some of the advantages Rich Communication Suite (RCS)
provides over the existing mobile telephony.
But even before we talk about advantages of RCS let’s see where the
communication world is heading to and how is it impacting various stakeholders
in this area. Here we define a term called “Over-The-Top (OTT)” services. These
are services carried over the networks but without the carrier service provider
being involved in planning, provisioning, selling or servicing them. This means
that when subscribers use these services, no – or a very small fraction of - direct
revenue goes to the carrier service provider. Examples of such OTT applications
are Google Talk, Blackberry Messenger, Skype, WhatsApp etc. To the end user a
similar service availed through OTT costs much lesser than what it costs if
availed through traditional means. To get the idea of this difference you can
compare the cost and ease of chatting through Google Talk with the cost and
ease of exchanging text messages.
As you can easily see, OTT services provide many advantages over traditional
mobile communication. It gives the user features available only on a computer
till now. To top it all since it utilizes the IP technology it’s much cheaper
to the end user. But all is not well for OTT applications as they require user
to remain connected to the internet all the time. A bigger limitation is that
at both the ends users should be equipped with smart phones supporting these
applications. Hence in developing countries where the penetration of smart phones
is still poor, OTT is yet to become successful. Another limitation is the lack
of interoperability of applications. What this means is that at both the ends users
must use same application.
With the introduction of RCS these gaps can be filled. The goal is to
provide features as good as those provided by OTT applications and at the same
time use the infrastructure of carrier service providers. Since the application
would be controlled majorly by the network providers, information such as
multimedia capability of the other user’s handset can be shown to the user
starting the conversation. Hence even if one can chat with any one on phone,
sending a sound file would be allowed by the network only if other person’s
device supports it. At the same time service providers can collaborate among
each other to make RCS interoperable ie an Airtel subscriber can chat with a
subscriber from Vodafone without any glitch.
Thus a concerted effort by the telecom players would make sure that
users would see value in using RCS over OTTs.
It would in turn make the service providers get return on investments
they have made on their massive telecom infrastructure. GSMA (GSM Association)
is bringing some of the biggest names in telecom industry all over the world to
convert this concept into reality. Currently there are no commercial solutions
available on RCS which incorporate complete features promised by RCS. But companies
such as China Mobile (in china), SK telecom (in South Korea) and Megafon (in
Russia) have achieved some success with RCS like services that have a mix of
services and packages that fit for their individual markets. Some Spanish and
German operators have plans to launch formal RCS in the first half of 2012.
Still there is a long way to go for telecom operators before RCS can replace
OTTs.
References and Further Reading
Good post to know about RCS
ReplyDeletegood information. would like to know more
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