Rich Communication Suite

Rich Communication Suite (RCS) is a [http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1189463 joint industry effort] aiming to speed up the evolution of mobile phone communication towards rich communication.

According to the [http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1189463 press release] , from the end-user point of view RCS would enable communication such as |instant messaging, video sharing and buddy lists. These capabilities would be available on any type of devices using an open communication between devices and networks. Main features of RCS are:
* Enhanced Phonebook, with service capabilities and presence enhanced contacts information
* Enhanced Messaging, which enables a large variety of messaging options including chat and messaging history
* Enriched Call, which enables multimedia content sharing during a voice call

Interoperability between different terminal vendor RCS clients and RCS service interworking between operators are the key aims of RCS Initiative.

Participants of RCS Initiative

Founding members of RCS are Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung.

Additional members include the following companies: Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Bouygues Telecom, EMOBILE, Huawei, KDDI , LG Electronics, NEC, NTT, NTT DoCoMo, Motorola, SFR, SK Telecom, SOFTBANK MOBILE Corp, Swisscom, Telstra, Telenor, TMN and Toshiba.

Technical features

RCS leverages the various existing standards, thus RCS takes on board different services defined by e.g. 3GPP and OMA and combines them with the Enhanced Phonebook. This allows the service capabilities as well as presence information of the different recipients to be shown in the terminal phonebook application.

RCS reuses the capabilities of 3GPP specified IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) core system as the underlying service platform taking care of issues such as authentication, authorization, registration, charging and routing.

The core feature set of RCS includes:

* Enhanced Phonebook, with service capabilities and presence enhanced contacts information
* Enhanced Messaging, which enables a large variety of messaging options including chat and messaging history
* Enriched Call, which enables multimedia content sharing during a voice call.

The following standardized services are a part of RCS concept:
* Presence
* Voice call
* IM
* Video Share
* Image Share
* SMS
* MMS

Status

According to the [http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1189463 RCS press release] , by February 2008 the RCS Initiative has defined a core feature set, developed reference implementations of the services and conducted interoperability testing in multi-vendor environment. The intention was to have interoperable rich communication services available in 2008. Current aim is that the first interoperable RCS services are set to be launched in mid 2009.

RCS Initiative demonstrated interoperability of the RCS compatible terminals at the Barcelona 3GSM exhibition 2008. RCS Initiative also announced an RCS interoperability demo at IMS World Forum 2008 in Paris.

[http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2008/press08_55.shtml GSMA press release] tells RCS integration testing takes place in Helsinki at the end of September hosted by TeliaSonera with a full update on the progress of initiative in Mobile Asia Congress during November.

As of 15th of September the RCS initiative is moved to a GSMA work program. See the [http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2008/press08_55.shtml GSMA press release] for details.

References

* [http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1189463 Rich Communication Suite Press Release]
* [http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2008/04/ims-rich-communications-suite-necessary.html Disruptive analysis on RCS]
* [http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2008/press08_55.shtml GSMA press release on RCS]

See also

* IMS

External links

* [http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Feb2008/5799.htm “Ericsson launched Multimedia Communication Suite”]