RCS is in theory and intended to be a carrier service. From what Apple announced, all we know of what they are doing is is 1) adding RCS protocol support to Messages and 2) working with the GSM Association to beef up security, somehow.

In reality, RCS is practically a Google service at this point, and we don’t know a damn thing about how that is going to affect interoperability since the carriers have more or less outsourced the service to Google.

Yes, I think RCS will be supported free of charge similar to SMS and MMS today. I also suspect that Apple will reserve blue bubbles for native iMessage and use green bubbles for RCS.

There was an info somewhere that RCS will still be green:

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-confirms-rcs-messages-w...

Does RCS rely on Apple servers? If it just goes through the same carrier network the way SMS does, why would Apple need to be compensated for the use of their cloud infrastructure?

Yes, Apple will most likely run their own RCS servers.

Thank you I just came by to say that

RCS isn't encrypted, doesn't work without phones, doesn't have a single identity across multiple devices, etc so it's not going to replace iMessage.

RCS can be encrypted. Whether Apple chooses to do so is yet to be seen of course, but I'm guessing they will reserve encryption for "blue bubbles."

Yes, as a non-standard google extension that is not guaranteed to be present.

To illustrate the issue, imagine apple added support for "encrypted RCS" that was just iMessage's message blob stuck in an RCS blob (this is essentially how google's encrypted messaging solution works). Would you be ok with that being presented as "encrypted RCS"?

If only there was an encrypted chat service, that works on multiple devices, has a single identity across all of them, etc. Oh well, guess we'll all have to buy iPhones to use iMessage.

There is matrix.

Correct! There are numerous options available across a wide variety of platforms, and yet people obsess specifically over iMessage because of perceived (and seemingly US only?) obsession with blue bubbles.