The Verge has a big exclusive – Google has managed to corral carriers into supporting something called the “Universal Profile for Rich Communication Services”, or Chat, which basically replaces SMS in every Android phone.
top-tier Android phone can cost upwards of a thousand dollars, and for that money, you’ll get some amazing features. It will have a stellar screen, top-flight camera, gobs of storage, and an absolutely atrocious texting experience.
Most people in the world, whether they buy an iPhone or an Android phone, dump all the preinstalled chat applications into a junk folder, install WhatsApp or WeChat (or Telegram in repressive dictatorships like Russia and Iran), and forget this American obsession with iMessage vs. Google’s 238437 chat apps even exists.
That being said.
Now, the company is doing something different. Instead of bringing a better app to the table, it’s trying to change the rules of the texting game, on a global scale. Google has been quietly corralling every major cellphone carrier on the planet into adopting technology to replace SMS. It’s going to be called “Chat”, and it’s based on a standard called the “Universal Profile for Rich Communication Services”. SMS is the default that everybody has to fall back to, and so Google’s goal is to make that default texting experience on an Android phone as good as other modern messaging apps.
Sounds like something they should’ve done ten years ago, but as you dive further into the details, a whole bunch of huge red flags pop up:
But remember, Chat is a carrier-based service, not a Google service. It’s just “Chat”, not “Google Chat”. In a sign of its strategic importance to Google, the company has spearheaded development on the new standard, so that every carrier’s Chat services will be interoperable. But, like SMS, Chat won’t be end-to-end encrypted, and it will follow the same legal intercept standards. In other words: it won’t be as secure as iMessage or Signal.
In the current political and societal climate, the lack of end-to-end encryption is absolutely bonkers. Obviously, there’s no encryption because carriers (and our governments) want to snoop on our communications, but with end-to-end encrypted options readily available, why even bother going 2-3 years back in time?
If you’re still trying to wrap your head around the idea that Google won’t have a standalone consumer chat app, well, so am I. “The fundamental thesis behind the RCS protocol is it’s a carrier service,” Sabharwal says. That means that the carriers will be the final arbiters of what Chat can and can’t do – and whether it will be successful. The good news is that Google appears to have herded all the carrier cats into a box where their Chat services will actually be interoperable.
Isn’t the point to get away from under carrier control, not slide back under it?
I just don’t see how such an archaic service like this will ever gain any traction, when most of the world has already settled on its chat service, mostly dictated by what your friends and family uses. Without end-to-end encryption and while under carrier control, this service seems like a massive step backward – not forward.
Many/most people I know in the US, use sms, with whatever default app their phone ships with. Text messaging was almost always cheap here, so we rolled with it. And now its rare for it to not just be unlimited. So there isn’t a need for whatsapp/ect from a price perspective.
And Allo just wasn’t being used by anyone. So, by getting carriers to implement chat, google gets everyone to “enjoy” the improvements of allo on Android. It makes sense from a Google perspective, and a normal consumer perspective.
Encryption is a really good idea, and it should have been standard, but I’m not sure how many people will care. I mean, they trust facebook with every detail of their lives, whats the harm in doing it via text?
Don’t get me wrong, I hate this idea. I hate typing notifications, read receipts, etc. But I think it makes sense and will be successful.
Many/most people I know in the US, use sms, with whatever default app their phone ships with. Text messaging was almost always cheap here, so we rolled with it. And now its rare for it to not just be unlimited. So there isn’t a need for whatsapp/ect from a price perspect
This is just another lame solution looking for a problem.
Sms/Text messaging is pretty much universal, meaning it works with/is compatible with pretty much any phone that supports it no matter how new or old it is, unlike these “messaging” apps.
Have to really wonder if this is something guys like Thom really is capable of comprehending.
Edited 2018-04-22 14:15 UTC
Yeah, I’m not sure why carriers are doing this, if its just going to be included in existing plans with no additional revenue. What on earth are they gaining with this? Is there a greater burden to their systems by running SMS, that is giving them incentive to switch to something else?
The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect one.
I send messages every day to people who may or may not have any of the superior messaging platforms Thom advocates or envisions. Not everyone has WhatsApp. I may not even know if they have an Android, and iPhone, or something else.
If I know somebody’s phone number, I can send a text and I know they will get it. The value is in the universality. Like the voice-based phone system itself, the power is in the network.
For example, for any number of reasons I might find myself having to text somebody that works at my company. I can find their mobile phone number easily. I have no idea what apps they have installed. If I am visiting a customer or supplier, the same. I probably know their phone number. Maybe I have a business card. Again, I have no idea what phone they are using, never mind their app of choice. In China, it might be WeChat ( which I do not have installed ). I have certainly made casual social connections where all I know is a phone number.
In fact, I use SMS all the time when apps fail. I have certainly had WhatsApp messages gone unanswered and then sent an SMS that got a response. I am sure most iPhone users have had the experience of sending a message to a previous iPhone user that has switched to Android and found that their messages were no longer going through because they were being sent as iMessage instead of SMS.
Replacing SMS with something just better but just as universal and reliable would be a huge step forward. Just because it does not solve every problem ( especially surveillance ) does not mean that it is not an advance.
Also, I would not be so quick to assume that the apps you believe are secure truly are. I am hesitant to assume that any mobile phone application actually guarantees privacy. I know WhatsApp supposedly offers end-to-end encryption but it is owned by Facebook after all and we have seen a lot lately their true views on privacy. That is before you even start to worry about what carriers or governments might be up to.
Insightful.
I would add : -“And when you have only one bar @ your antenna, without even Edge, just because you are in the country… You are happy with SMS.”
Now that they have more developers working on the main SMS app. Please fix this problem. For the last year whenever I get a new text message on my Pixel phone the standard SMS app crashes upon opening what I received. When I go back to the message it opens fine the 2nd time. It does this for every new message. This problem goes a way if I archive or delete most if not all of my text messages.
Edited 2018-04-21 01:17 UTC
Lolz, I’m personally just fine using SMS for simple text messaging. What’s the big deal with iMessage anyway?
If I know someone well I will have their phone number so I’ll just text
If I don’t know someone so well then I’ll just use FB
That’s not how iMessage works. You use the person’s phone number as normal. If they have an iPhone it’ll send it as an iMessage. If not, or there’s a problem, it sends it as an SMS.
So it’s a transparent thing, not a conscious decision to open one app or another.
Both my carriers support this, both in EU/EEA. When using the Google Messages app (regular SMS app), or any other who has implemented it, as it’s a standard, if your carrier supports it, you’ll be prompted (may take a little while) to enable it. It then “talks” to the carrier and enables the service without any hassle. All connected to your phone number. Just like iMessage, except it’s a _standard_, a carrier/cellular thing, not proprietary. And after enabling it new Settings appear in Settings for that particular feature, with the very basics and easy to understand. Also the set up, at least with Google’s app, is seamless and explains good what it’s about, and you’ll clearly see it’s a carrier service, just with more features than SMS/MMS.
Not many of my Android friends have enabled it, but if, it by default goes through the Internet instead of SMS (one can choose Wi-Fi only), and supports more features. Since basically everyone has unlimited SMS (you Americans still pay to _recieve_??), the important thing is the features. It could eventually replace WhatsApp for instance. I assume the standard is under development still and will get new features along the road.
It’s also super easy to deactivate (iMessage AFAIK is hard to get out of). You can easily enter your carrier account page and see that the service is enabled, and in my case at least it’s totally free.
We need this on all major mobile OS’. It would eliminate the need for iMessage as it’s a standard, which carriers seem to adopt rapidly here.
Problem is Apple would probably not support this, but maybe, just maybe in the future when carriers adopt it and since the market share of Android is 90 % + it would annoy Android users when to their iOS users it’ll be only sent as an SMS or MMS.
Edited 2018-04-21 16:35 UTC
Here in the US we don^aEURTMt pay for SMS anymore so that is fine.
Everyone will support it cause it will bolt on top of SMS and really not require phone vendors to do anything.
Problem is do you want to do things like send money etc over unencrypted RCS? (Other features you can do on things like Facebook message and iMessage)
I see why Google is doing this because they can^aEURTMt get a bunch of people to get on the messaging systems they have built.
Apple was very smart in this as they linked iMessage and SMS into the same App and put it on all phones that can use iOS 9 and above. Users didn^aEURTMt have to do anything. Google couldn^aEURTMt do this as they don^aEURTMt control Android on that level and had no way to put it on older devices and can^aEURTMt even get vendors to include it as the default on newer devices.
In the end Apple will have to support RCS but that won^aEURTMt change iMessage (may force them to include better features into iMessage maybe)
Yeah they’ll probably support both the standard and their proprietary system between iOS users messaging.
Well in the two EU/EEA countries I live in we have universal apps to transfer money between people. If they’re in your contacts, it’s two taps away (and entering the amount), and NO fee/commission, unless transferring a very large amount. It’s just linking your bank account and/or denit card to the service. Service provided by collaboration between banks, in one country it’s managed by one bank, formerly the national bank, with I think the state as the majority shareholder, and in the other IDK, but it works between banks without any fee, and it’s instant. You can use it to split bills and even receive invoices and receipts.
I used to be able to use the same Jabber client both for Google Talk, Facebook Messenger and even MSN using a gateway.
Then for some reason everybody started using WhatsApp and companies figured they could make more money just closing up their protocols.
I miss the good old days of XMPP.
Facebook has the same clusterf**k as Google. Chat in Messenger, WhatsApp or Instagram? All owned by Facebook. My older relatives send me messages on different platforms all the time. They just pick one it seems at the moment. WhatsApp for me is superior.
In my home country everyone uses Facebook Messenger (it wasn’t bad before, but now WhatsApp is just way more pleasant to use), but I dislike it hard as it shows ads in the conversation list, were late into encryption, don’t or didn’t respect Do Not Disturb (I have disabled it through Android Apps Settings instead, so just an icon, although my Wear watch vibrates, but can always uninstall the app from my watch) and runs 2-3 services on Android, like VideoPlayerService needs to be STICKY? Come on. And FacebookMainService without having the main Facebook app installed…
Moving to Spain and seeing everyone in the Spanish speaking world using WhatsApp was curious, it’s always the question when exchanging phone numbers, “is that your WhatsApp number? do you have it?”, I also ask it every time now.
When I first started to use it (basically had to, people didn’t use Facebook for messaging so…) it wasn’t owned by Facebook and after one free year one had to pay 1 euro per year (nothing but enough to upset those who thought it was completely free just after ordering a beer for 1 euro… that lasts 2 minutes), and remember WhatsApp was very clear on their website (where you paid, as of why, to keep it AD FREE, loved it, gladly paid after a free year).
Facebook got rid of the paid model, but WhatsApp is luckily still WhatsApp and doesn’t require a Facebook account at all, and end to end encryption came quickly and very well explained in the app. But I guess it’s just a matter of time before they merge everything into one service, or, to preserve WhatsApp dominance in countries mentioned AND basically all developing countries (for messaging), they’ll start showing ads as well, and paid “Stories” which in WhatsApp today are “Status” where you can add what’s basically an update in form of picture or video + text for all to see. Nobody uses it though, so love that. Soon probably paid Statuses or whatever.
I would much more be happy to pay that 1 euro a year, which was done through their former website to avoid app stores taking 33 %. Just phone number + PayPal or card.
Also just video chat, sending and receiving photos and videos, all is much cleaner on WhatsApp. And now we have web.whatsapp.com which works great. Dunno if Facebook has let the former employees run the basics still, like MS did with Skype, but that’s my guess. Because it just doesn’t feel Facebook-ish at all, for example the website to chat on. And works great with PushBullet browser extension to read and if wanted respond without finding your phone.
Edited 2018-04-21 18:24 UTC
XMPP is still around – and in the form of Google Hangouts (formerly Google Talk), it’s the primary IM I use (helps that all my friends still use it too)
Or just use email. With some messenger-like interface on top of it. With IMAP IDLE support it should be fast.
E.g. Hop, MailTime and Microsoft Send can do the job.
https://mailtime.com/
https://delta.chat/en/ is an other working on that.
If they allow other apps to send the ‘new style SMS’ messages, than that app can just do the encryption before sending the message. They can just use the same encryption system, Signal Protocol, as is used by Telegram and I think also Facebook.
Obviously this means the meta-data is still visible.
But the underlying infrastructure is federated, I do like that.
Edited 2018-04-22 08:59 UTC
I’m Dutch, just like Thom, and I still use SMS as my default communication method on phones. I have unlimited SMS, it’s quite secure and it *always* works, so I don’t see why I would ever want to use WhatsApp with all of its Facebook intrusion (which is very bad for your privacy – and I don’t have Facebook either, btw).
What I wonder if: does it depend on WiFi/4G/5G, etc. or does this also work at the bigger range, etc. SMS does too. I see in the article they will probably charge for it as part of the data-plan. But what is the transport ?