Rich Communication Suite Initiative Gains Momentum
60 Operators and Vendors Back Initiative; GSMA Releases First RCS Specification
BARCELONA, Spain/PRNewswire/ -- The GSMA today reported
significant progress in the Rich Communication Suite (RCS) Initiative,
a service providing interoperable, enriched communication capabilities
such as in-call multimedia sharing, conversational messaging and
presence-enhanced contact management, all accessible through a user's
mobile phone contact list. The initiative has generated considerable
momentum across a number of fronts since the GSMA brought RCS into its
work programme in September 2008, including the delivery of the RCS
Release 1 specification, the addition of new programme participants and
the successful completion of interoperability tests.
"We live in a world where users want to be able to communicate and
access and share information any place, any time, over any device,"
said Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer for the GSMA. "RCS
supports these requirements, providing users the ability to launch a
variety of enhanced communications, all from the personal contact lists
in their mobile devices. Importantly, mobile operators are ideally
positioned to deliver these new communications services to the mass
market and drive mainstream adoption, with a combined user base of 3
billion people. It's a win-win for operators and for business users and
consumers."
The GSMA recently issued the first technical specification for RCS,
defining the feature set for the first version of the service and
ensuring that vendors will be able to develop standard, interoperable
implementations. The specification outlines the requirements for
features including:
-- Enhanced Address Book -- provides presence and capability
indications, enables users to initiate communications including
voice calls, video calls, file transfers or messaging, and allows
users to integrate multimedia elements, such as photos of contacts.
-- Rich Call -- enables users to exchange different types of content,
such as video or photos, during a call.
-- Rich Messaging -- expands on traditional instant messaging to
simplify and unify multiple messaging mediums and provide a richer
user experience.
Future releases will include providing RCS functionality on other
platforms such as PCs, offering a seamless user experience across PCs
and mobiles.
"Today a mobile user utilises separate and distinct services,
resulting in a disconnected communications experience. RCS addresses
this issue by providing enhanced and integrated services that can be
customisable," said Diane Myers, Directing Analyst for Service Provider
VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research. "The ability to utilise the core
components of RCS to enhance other applications and services is very
compelling, and RCS represents an important milestone for operators to
offer and market seamless and differentiated service capabilities."
The number of operators and vendors supporting RCS has doubled in
the past 5 months, growing to 60 participating companies. New members
include OKI Electric Industry Co., Smart Communications, SoftBank
Mobile, T-Mobile and Wind Telecomunicazioni S.p.A., among others. The
organisations collaborating in the RCS initiative are focused on
driving the development and adoption of the industry-standard enhanced
communications service.
Last month, the RCS Technology Group held the latest round of
interoperability testing, with 14 companies coming together to test RCS
services on eight different handsets. Attending companies included
Alcatel- Lucent, Comneon, Ecrio, Ericsson, Huawei, LG, Movial, Nokia,
Nokia Siemens Networks, Orange, Samsung, SFR, SK Telecom and Sony
Ericsson. Over a one-week period, participants initiated more than
7,000 RCS sessions, testing core services including Enhanced Address
Book, Content Sharing and Enhanced Messaging. Importantly, this
represented the first joint tests of RCS in an environment with two
operators -- Orange and SFR -- and two infrastructure suppliers --
Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks.
"We have made important progress in the RCS initiative to drive the
development and adoption of applications and services that provide an
interoperable, convergent, rich communication experience based on IMS,"
said Aude Pichelin, chair of the RCS Initiative and Head of Multimedia
Services Standardisation, Orange. "Following the approval of the RCS
technical specifications and the successful completion of the latest
round of interoperability testing, operators are now ready to start
trials of RCS and plan commercial deployment of the service."
More information on the RCS initiative is available at http://www.gsmworld.com/rcs.
About the GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile
communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites more
than 750 of the world's mobile operators, as well as 200 companies in
the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software
companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and
entertainment organisations. The GSMA is focused on innovating,
incubating and creating new opportunities for its membership, all with
the end goal of driving the growth of the mobile communications
industry. For more information, please visit http://www.gsmworld.com/
Source: GSMA
CONTACT: Daniel Lowther, +44 7747 636 687, or Richard Fogg,
+44 7887 845 236, both of GSMA, press@gsm.org
Web site:
http://www.gsmworld.com/
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