Telstra has announced it will be enabling Rich Communication Services (RCS) from next month to allow a better messaging experience between Android smartphones and iPhones.
This comes almost 3 years after Apple officially decided to adopt RCS to improve texting between iPhone and Android with higher quality and security.
The difference between iPhone and Android messaging has been clearly obvious without RCS with blue and green bubbles in the message thread.
The blue bubbles indicate it came from an iPhone or was part of iMessage and green showing the message came from an Android device.
RCS not only provides greater security but also other features like read receipts and indications when the other person is typing their reply.
Will also allow sharing of images and videos in their full quality. Pre-RCS communication between iPhone and Android users meant attachments were severely compressed.
Until now these messaging features were only available for iPhone-to-iPhone and Android-to-Android messaging.
RCS will finally fill the great divide between iPhone and Android messaging.
Telstra to roll out RCS for Android customers from November 16, with iOS customers able to use RCS after the December iOS release.
Telstra’s RCS rollout is scheduled for completion by the end of 2026.
No word on when Optus and Vodafone will run their own respective RCS rollouts.
With Telstra being the first mover, the RCS experience between iPhone and Android users will likely be restricted to communication between Telstra customers.
The RCS upgrade will also apply to MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) using the Telstra network, including Belong and Aldi Mobile.
