What is this fuss about RCS ? For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to find the answer to this one .
After much information gathering i made myself understand that :-
The Rich Communication Services programme is a global initiative to deploy inter-operator services within an industry ecosystem.
Marketed by the GSMA under the brand name joyn, RCS is an upgrade that marks the transition of messaging and voice capabilities from Circuit Switched technology to an all-IP world.
Wider and large scale IMS deployment, interoperability between different terminal vendor RCS clients and RCS service interworking between operators are the key aims of the RCS Initiative.
Whats special about RCS ?
- Enhanced Phonebook: service capabilities and enhanced contacts information such as presence and service discovery.
- Enhanced Messaging: enables a large variety of messaging options including chat, emoticons, location share and file sharing.
- Enriched Calls: enables multimedia content sharing during a voice call, video call and video sharing (see what I see).
RCS releases
Five releases of the RCS specifications have been made to date. Each release expanded the scope of its predecessor.
lRelease 1 : Offered the first definitions for the enrichment of voice and chat with content sharing, driven from an RCS enhanced address book.
lRelease 2 : Added broadband access to RCS features: enhancing the messaging and enabling sharing of files.
lRelease 3: Focused on the broadband device as a primary device.
lRelease 4: Included support for LTE.
lRelease 5: The most recent release, global interoperability is a key aspect of these specifications.
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As the team developed a web client for making and receiving SIP calls over websockets through a proxy SIP server , I felt its an achievement big enough. To integrate it with RCS ( Rich Communication Suite ) stack appeared as a very complicated job .
I began by adding RCS specific standards modules one by one instead of importing the whole stack / library all together .
So the modules for XCAP for buddylist , MSRP for file transfer , geolocation mapping , cloud sync of phonebook and message book have begun taking shape . In essence following features set are expected out of a RCS enabled Client ( short outline )
Provisioning
- · OAUTH integration with operator customer portal
- · RCS HTTP Auto-Configuration
- · Manual IMS credentials, typically reserved for testing / troubleshooting RCS Services
RCS services:
- · Service Discovery
- o OPTIONS and Presence supported
- o Address book polling
- · 1-1 Chat
- o IMDN
- o Is-Composing
- o Store & forward / deferred message and notification delivery
- o Hotfixes compliant
- · Group Chat
- o Hotfixes compliant
- o Is-Composing
- o IMDN
- o Geo-location Push
- · File Transfer
- o MSRP based
- o HTTP based
- o Store & forward
- o Geo-location push via FT
- o vCard sharing
- o Thumbnail support
- · Voice & video
- o Best effort voice
- o Transcode
- · Network Address Book Support
- o Synchronization to SyncML based network address book
- o Contact import from Google, Facebook etc.
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At this stage i will also put in a bit more about RCS e
RCS e
What is the difference between RCS-e and RCS?
RCS-enhanced (RCS-e) is the currently available version of RCS, developed to speed time to market. It offers enhanced features such as instant messaging, live video sharing, and file transfer across any device on any network operator.
RCS e Benefits :
Focus on advanced communication
– chat , file transfer , video sharing
Easy to Use
-zero touch from end user perspective
-minimal setup for subscribers
-Interoperability across devices , infrastructure components and service providers
Low barrier to entry / simplify networks
– Capability discovery using SIP OPTIONS
– Less impact on network elements and handset battery
– Lack of presence server reduces cost and time to market
Universal
– Allows implementation in lower range devices
– One common device specification
RCS-e Customer Value Proposition
New IP Communication Services , Profile Sharing , Native Device Integration
RCS e Characteristics
Dynamic Capability Discovery
User Perspective
network detects when user attaches with RCs e device
detection triggers network provisioning and client configuration
authentication by network
SSO / GIBA in 3G coverage
SIP Digest in Wifi
Encryption for Wifi access
TLS for SIP and TCP media or IPsec
SRTP for UDP or IPsec
NAT traversal and Keep-alives
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Telecom R & D
