Rich Communications – Time for Change!

RCSStrategyAt the Rich Communications event in Berlin, we ran a pre-conference workshop on WebRTC that included Tim Panton from Westhawk, Victor Pascual Avila from Quobis, Juan Mateu from Solaiemes, and myself.  The material from the workshop is show below.  It was a packed day, with the realization that an RCS strategy that does not include WebRTC is not a viable strategy.  Tim showed a really nice example of hypervoice in action, as we explored all the innovations taking place around WebRTC.  Juan again demonstrated real world services made possible by RCS APIs.  And Victor showed how to make WebRTC work, with a specific focus on the enterprise.

My main take-aways from the conference were (you can see some of the highlights of the conference in the slides below as well):

  • The current RCS strategy appears to be “don’t worry, once RCS is ubiquitous, people will use it.”  This is not a strategy, this is a recipe for disaster, and RCS is missing a viable go to market plan;
  • There is no clear view on role of RCS and WebRTC – this is a failure of the RCS strategy and go to market plan;
  • Lots of cozy operator:supplier relationships based on the above broken strategy, with vendors chanting “do it, do it, do it” but little action as operators realize the game is changing as sign posted by Orange Libon;
  • Orange Libon is the model operators should adopt, the industry’s RCS strategy needs to change;
  • Senior telco figures have nailed their careers to the above broken RCS strategy and are impeding change;
  • Lots of discussion on how RCS is a platform, but no commitment, just something to talk about while the industry waits for ubiquity;
  • The Telecom App Dev Manifesto highlights the importance of promotion.  For example Solaiemes is power behind the Joyn hackathons as their approach works across multiple RCS implementations.  Yet no one mentioned it; and
  • Analysys Mason showed a 25% ARPU decline as data revenue growth will not offset the messaging and voice declines.

Recommendations:

  • Copy Orange Libon and interop with other operators’ IP implementations without the silly roaming approach of RCS which simply drives more customers to other service providers;
  • RCS Strategy needs a revamp (include IP client, WebRTC, and APIs) and commitment to a viable go to market;
  • Promote small companies’ with innovative technology when you use them, it is essential for their survival;
  • There should be an open call to real telecom API experts like Tropo and Twilio to create a modern well-written RCS API.  OMA is simply not competent in APIs.