Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a message on its official website, openly soliciting opinions on the "notice on the scale Development of 5G Information on strengthening end-to-end Network Cooperation (draft for soliciting opinions)".

In the notice, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology made it clear that new mobile phones must support 5G messages. At the same time, "encourage qualified mobile phone manufacturers to achieve 5G message function support through product system upgrade".

From this, we can see that the state's support for 5G news is very strong.

So, here's the problem. What is the origin of this "5G message"? Why are the authorities pushing so hard?

In fact, "5G message" has nothing to do with 5G. It is neither a unique function of 5G nor a newly developed business in the 5G era. Its real identity is the RCS business, which was born in 2008.

RCS, the full name is Rich Communication Suite, rich media communication kit.

What is "Rich Media"?

Traditional phones have only voice, and traditional text messages have only text. And "rich media", including text, voice, pictures, video, animation, expression, location and other forms of media. Wechat, which we use every day, is a rich media communication tool.

RCS, also known as converged communication.

The so-called "convergence" can be understood not only as the integration of multiple media forms, but also as the integration of IP services and traditional telecommunications network services.

The past Life and present Life of █ RCS before we introduce the RCS function in detail, let's take a look at its origin.

Let's go back to more than 20 years ago.

At that time, the PC Internet developed at an astonishing speed, which brought unprecedented information explosion to mankind.

In particular, the emergence of instant messaging tools such as ICQ, MSN, OICQ (that is, QQ) makes people see the infinite fun of multimedia communication.

As a result, people wonder whether such an interesting way of communication can be transplanted to mobile phones.

The icq3G mobile communication standard, the originator of Internet instant messaging tools, was established under this background (May 2000). Since 3G, the key development direction of mobile phones has become data services to meet people's growing demand for multimedia communications.

In the development process from 3G to 4G, the 3GPP organization, which is responsible for leading the development of standards, takes into account that traditional voice calls and short message services also need to evolve to multimedia. Therefore, IMS was formally proposed in the 2002 version of 3GPP Release 5.

Readers who engage in communications must be very familiar with the word IMS. VoLTE (Voice over LTE), which was very popular a few years ago, is based on IMS.

The full name of IMS is called IP Multimedia Subsystem (IP Multimedia Subsystem). It includes a series of different communication equipment network elements.

The network structure and business process of IMS are very complex. We can understand the role of IMS this way-it helps 4G LTE, a pure data network, to support voice calls and text messages, and to enhance them (upgrade to multimedia form).

IMS is a "plug-in" for 4G LTE networks.

With it, 4G can make phone calls and send text messages.

On the basis of IMS, there are VoLTE and RCS.

In 2007, RCS was proposed by a small number of members of GSMA (Global Association for Mobile Communication Systems) for the exchange of multimedia messages between operators.

In February 2008, GSMA formally established the RCS project and named it "home". Since then, GSMA has released several versions of the RCS and RCS-e (enhance, enhanced) specifications.

GSMA, which can be understood as the global association of operators, mainly represents the interests of operators. After the release of RCS, it has been supported by many operators around the world. Especially after the release of 4G LTE standard in 2008, RCS has become the standard for operators to build 4G.

Also before 2008, iPhone and Android came out one after another, mobile communications entered the era of smartphones, and the mobile Internet market began to explode.

Around 2011, OTT communication tools represented by WhatsApp, LINE and Facebook Message appeared and rose rapidly, which greatly eroded the voice and SMS revenue of traditional operators.

As a result, overseas operators rely more on RCS, hoping to compete with OTT software. At that time, Vodafone, Orange, SKT, Verizon, O2 and other well-known overseas operators all launched their own RCS solutions and brands.

In 2016, in order to further promote the product development and global deployment of RCS, GSMA launched RCS Universal Profile (General configuration File, referred to as UP, which is equivalent to a specification standard), and updated several versions one after another. The latest version is Version 2.4, which was released in October 2019.

The evolution of the version of RCS and UP let's look back at the development of RCS in China.

The start of 3G and 4G construction in China is generally later than that in Europe, America, Japan and South Korea. Needless to say, 3G is 8 years late. 4G is 5 years late. At the end of 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the LTE business license.

As an active builder of LTE, China Mobile attaches great importance to the commercial value of IMS, VoLTE and RCS while building a large-scale LTE network in 2014.

Because of Fetion's experience, China Mobile is fully aware of the pipelization trend of traditional operators, and profit margins will continue to be overstocked. It is urgent to seize the traffic entrance with OTT to find new business growth points.

In 2015, just after the domestic LTE network coverage began to take shape, China Mobile significantly advanced the construction progress of IMS and VoLTE networks in various provinces in China, and actively promoted the RCS business verification and testing of Guangzhou Research Institute.

With the advent of 5G, things are different again.

In order to vacate more spectrum space for the 5G network, operators must accelerate the withdrawal of the 2max 3G network. However, the traditional voice and SMS services attached to 2Compact 3G network must be migrated to LTE and IMS network as soon as possible. With the mature coverage of domestic LTE network and the completion of the construction of IMS, the launch of RCS has a good opportunity. )

At the same time, in the face of the continuous crackdown on OTT business, operators also hope to make a last resort through RCS. As a result, there is the joint release of the "5G message" business.

The reason why it is called "5G message" is to reflect the generation gap between RCS service and traditional message service with the help of 5G brand.

The functional features of █ RCS next let's talk about the functional features of RCS. With regard to this aspect, I believe you have learned something about it through various major media reports.

China Mobile put forward the "three new" goals based on RCS in 2014. The "three new" refers to new calls, new messages, and new contacts, which respectively refer to the three major entrances on the mobile phone: phone calls, text messages, and address books.

With VoLTE as the core, "New call" enhances users' call quality and experience; "New message" seamlessly integrates multiple media and message formats, and seamlessly communicates with traditional short / MMS messages; and "New contact" builds a new social and public information service portal based on real mobile phone numbers.

In fact, this has clearly given the function and positioning of RCS.

Generally speaking, there are two kinds of RCS application scenarios, one is the message interaction between individual users and individual users, and the other is the message interaction between enterprise users and individual users.

For scenario 1, RCS supports peer-to-peer messages, group sending, group chat, voice, picture, video multimedia messages, sending location, business cards, etc., and even supporting message cloud backup and instant burn after reading.

RCS's individual user chat functions are similar to our current Wechat, and RCS doesn't show any advantages. Taking into account user habits and other reasons, RCS estimated that it is difficult to pry the dominant position of Wechat, the future may mainly be in a supplementary position.

What attracts more attention from operators and the whole industry is actually scenario 2.

In 2017, GSMA introduced MaaP into the UP2.0 specification and released a MaaP white paper that explicitly proposed the "RCS Business Rich Media message (RCS Business Messaging)" for A2P (Application to Person) industry messages, which is what we call scenario 2.

RCS business rich media message MaaP, which is Messaging as a Platform, is the platform.

RCS commercial rich media messages provide a message exchange interface between enterprises and individual users, which increases the interaction ability on the basis of pictures and videos, and makes it convenient for enterprises to output personalized services to users.

For example, a series of light application functions, such as air ticket hotel reservation query, logistics query and online purchase order query, can be realized through RCS commercial rich media messages.

The value of RCS business rich media messaging is that it provides a new channel for enterprises and users. With this channel, enterprises can reach users. Users can also access the service. In a sense, it is very similar to Mini Program, Wechat official account (service number), and even the call center.

In order to realize RCS commercial rich media messages, operators have set up MaaP capability-enhanced open platform and Chatbot chat robot on their own network. The platform opens the API interface to enterprises to provide services.

The architecture goes something like this:

RCS has some unique advantages.

First of all, it does not need to install a third-party APP separately, and the phone can support it natively. This not only greatly reduces the threshold for users, but also saves promotion costs.

These three icons are indispensable to everyone's mobile phone. Although most mobile phones do not support 5G messages at present, they can be supported by subsequent software upgrades by major manufacturers to support the RCS UP 2.4specification. Even if you are not a 5G phone (but at least a 4G phone), you can still support it.

The second advantage is that the RCS service is directly related to the mobile phone number, and the user number is the account number, so there is no need to register.

This also reduces the complexity of users using the business, not only solves the problem of identity authentication, but also opens up the "platform island" (there is no need to register a separate account in each merchant).

The third advantage of GE 1 is that RCS firmly holds the golden key of users' correspondence directory and can build a social network instantly without adding friends.

Despite the above advantages of RCS, what really determines its success is not its advantages, but its ecological and business model.

The industrial chain of RCS includes not only operators, equipment vendors, terminal manufacturers, but also platform service providers, content providers and so on.

Equipment vendors and terminal manufacturers can also say that the key is platform service providers and content service providers. It is unknown whether they are willing to invest, how the platform and applications should be developed, whether the development can get a return, how to attract merchants, whether to charge, how to charge, and whether merchants are willing to pay the bill.

If the ecology can not become bigger and stronger, it will not be able to incubate more 5G messaging application scenarios, and there will be no return on commercial value.

█ conclusion according to the official website of GSMA, as of October 2020, 136operators around the world have commercialized RCS. As of January 2022, the global RCS business has 421 million monthly active users and more than 1.2 billion supporting devices.

I believe that with the popularity of 5G, RCS will soon become a standard feature of everyone's mobile phones.

As to whether this function will be successful, we can only let time tell us the answer!

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fresh Jujube classroom (ID:xzclasscom), author: Xiaozaojun

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