Can RCS help mobile operators compete on apps?

The GSMA released a new version of the Rich Communications Suite (RCS) service specs this week, along with a developer contest to fuel the creation of RCS-based services.

In some quarters, RCS has been met with a fair amount of skepticism, as critics wonder if a lengthy, specification-by-consensus approach to new service development can compete with the new rapid-fire mobile services world driven by the iPhone, Android and other more developer-centric platforms.

Yet for mobile operators to compete they need some competitive advantage. Device and OS makers benefit from being able to target a global audience; in comparison, mobile operators are typically regional-based. The counter to that are a suite of services that are able to operate between carrier networks, something that companies like Apple can’t guarantee. It’s just that level of interoperability on a network/service level that drove mobile’s biggest success story – SMS.

“The challenge for mobile operators is that they are limited in how they can expand their services by their limitations of their networks and customer bases,” said Chris Barraclough, analyst at STL Partners and co-founder of its Telco 2.0 Initiative, which in the past has been critical of RCS. “How can they cooperate to compete with the ubiquity and scale of someone like Google or Apple?”

RCS seems to be gaining some momentum. In addition to the new spec release, industry vendors report that RCS has emerged as a new driver of IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) deployments in recent months.

“RCS is definitely an area that’s starting to get some momentum,” said Jonathan Zarkower, director of product marketing at Acme Packet. “RCS doesn’t depend on 4G, it’s perfectly capable of running on existing 3G architectures. The key here is the enhanced phone book. The contacts in my address book are spread out over many operator networks. RCS can help drive interoperable services like instant message or presence across those different networks and drive new revenue with supplemental services without forcing operators to have to create network overlays or administer additional domains.”

The newly-released RCS Release 2 adds some key enhancements to the specs, most notably support for delivering services to broadband access clients as well as support for multi-device environments. Both of those capabilities make such RCS-based services as in-call multimedia sharing, conversational messaging and presence-enhanced contact management all the more potentially powerful.

The just-announced RCS DevChallenge aims to spur new development based on the RCS specs, focused on two key areas: Best RCS client and Best RCS innovation. The winner from each category will showcased at the GSMA Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona in February 2010.