The final carrier has joined the party – Verizon will use Google’s Jibe Platform to power its Rich Communication Services (RCS) after reaching a deal of some sort. This follows similar switches by AT&T and T-Mobile last year.
Details are limited so far, but Verizon shared the news with us today, saying that the move to Google’s Jibe will “enable all new features, such as read receipts, and allow real interoperability with RCS on other networks.” The last part of that quote is a pretty big deal, as it means sending RCS messages to T-Mobile or AT&T customers should work so much better once Jibe is live.
Out of the gate, when RCS started making its way into US carriers, all of the carriers chose their own RCS platforms. That meant similar features to what you might find on Google’s Jibe, but without the “real” interoperability between carriers who were using other RCS platforms. It was kind of a mess that even started with the 3 carriers announcing they’d create their own client at one point, before quickly calling it quits on that idea.
Once we have more on this developing story, we’ll provide an update.
