Rich Communication Suite (RCS)

The business opportunity

Enhancing the user experience

Today, anyone with a PC and an Internet connection can enjoy richer and more advanced communications. The popularity of user communities has risen rapidly, with people increasingly joining social networks, sharing content and collaborating. Internet players – ISPs or other third parties – currently orchestrate all these services. Considering the fact that there are strong bonds between subscribers and communications service providers (CSP) it is clear that there is a great opportunity for CSPs to take part in this trend by collaborating with internet players and offering new, rich communication services.

Users are in general getting more demanding, posing greater challenges and making the convergent marketplace a more complex place in which to do business. One of the most significant responses of industry players to the challenges has been the Rich Communication Suite or RCS, industry initiative. That was kicked off by a small group of leading industry players, including Nokia Siemens Networks, in 2007 and the initiative went public in February 2008 at Barcelona´s Mobile World Congress. The GSMA added RCS to its work program in September 2008 and now more than 70 CSPs and vendors have joined.

The Rich Communication Suite (Source: GSMA)

What is RCS?

The GSMA’s Rich Communication Suite (RCS) will provide a feature-rich portfolio of services to unleash the communities hidden in a user’s phone book. Developed by the collaborative efforts of leading telecommunication companies, the first phase of RCS services launching in 2009 will offer an exciting range of features:

  • Enhanced Address Book – provides presence and capability indications, enables users to initiate communications including voice calls, video calls, file transfers or messaging, and allows users to integrate multimedia elements, such as photos of contacts.
  • Rich Call – enables users to exchange different types of content, such as video or photos, during a call.
  • Rich Messaging – expands on traditional instant messaging to simplify and unify multiple messaging mediums and provide a richer user experience.

What will RCS do?

For end-users, RCS means a new range of exciting, feature rich services from operators that will make the mobile even more central to their private and business lives – sharing a special image with friends or sharing data with colleagues around the world. For the industry players involved in the initiative, it will assist the rapid adoption of the mobile applications and services to deliver the rich communications experience to their customers.

  • RCS is not a competing service offering for people utilizing Internet based social networking services. RCS however allows to turn this new way of community communication into a real time communication experience.
  • RCS will build on the 3 bn mobile communication community, where the main value proposition is real time mobile communication. Global inter connectivity and inter operability will ensure mass level user adoption.
  • RCS is going to provide a superior user experience, offering services embedded within the native phone book.
  • RCS industry initiative shows top 5 terminal vendors being fully committed to support RCS.

Our solution

Rich communications from end to end

Nokia Siemens Networks provides a fully GSMA-compliant, end-to-end rich communication solution that is compliant with the RCS initiative and which supports both mobile and PC terminals.

rcs mobile client

RCS mobile client

RCS pc client

Nokia Siemens Networks PC Client for RCS

Key services today, with more to follow

- An enhanced phonebook presenting:

  • Presence and service capability information.
  • Context sensitive application launch pad – dependent on own and contact’s terminal and network capabilities.
  • Communication history provided with each contact.

- Enriched call:

  • Multimedia capability enables users to share videos, images, and files easily during a voice call.

- Enhanced messaging:

  • One-to-one and one-to-many SMS, MMS, and instant messaging

- Full service interworking between mobile and PC users

RCS topology

Full service interworking between networks and domains (fixed/mobile)

 

The benefits

Make your mark, earn your keep

Nokia Siemens Networks, a leader in the IMS-based FMC market, and Nokia, the world’s number one device and client developer, are both founding members of the RCS initiative. Our end-to-end solution has been fully tested and verified for interoperability with prevailing RCS handsets, as well as for interworking with CSP-to-CSP services. The first ever RCS demo at the Paris IMS World Forum in April 2008 featured our infrastructure.

Our solution benefits for CSPs:

  • Enabling easy-to-use rich communication services to tap new revenues and retain customers.
  • Assuring interoperability between terminals, clients and CSP networks for fast commercial launch to drive adoption and extend RCS’ global reach.
  • Providing the security that comes with being fully in line with IMS based fixed-mobile convergence strategy and the GSMA’s RCS initiative.
  • Safely lowering the walls between telecoms and the Internet.

Our solution benefits for end users:

  • Delivering secure rich communication services to the terminal of choice at the office, at home or on the move with mobile devices and soft phone clients in PCs.
  • Providing communication based on a presence and capability enhanced phonebook that shows how to best reach and communicate with family, friends, colleagues and other contacts.
  • Ensuring service interoperability so users can easily connect with friends and communities regardless of which CSPs they subscribe to.
  • Condensing mobile and PC contacts to one number and collecting all services in one bill

Links

The RCS industry initiative is a collaborative effort that aims to speedup and facilitate the introduction of commercial IMS-based rich communication services. To get more information please visit the following link: