If you’ve bene hoping to have a richer communication with your green bubble Android mates from your iPhone, or from Android hoping to get those “now typing” notifications from your iPhone mates don’t get too excited – it seems our Telcos have put this one right down the priority list here in Australia.

Announced two years ago as part of iOS 18 Apple made it possible for Android and iPhone users to send “text” messages in their relevant default messaging apps which would allow for simple emoji responses, notifications that the other user is typing and perhaps most critically higher quality media sharing. Anyone who has received a photo across a different platform via text will know it comes through looking horrible – because SMS (or more accurately MMS) doesn’t do high data rates and therefore larger file size transfers.

So this is a nice win for average users right? Of course!

It’s working AOK in a bunch of countries around the world too right? Yes!

Has any progress been made in Australia – none.

We asked two years ago and Telstra, Optus and TPG Vodafone all said it was something they would look at.

One year ago and all three were still happy to say they knew about it, even excited about it, but still not implemented.

Today, here’s the update.

Telstra says “Telstra continues to move towards enabling RCS Messaging and is actively engaged on how we support this.  We are looking at the necessary steps and will keep customers updated as things progress.“.

At TPG Vodafone it’s going to make the roadmap, but – not there yet “We are currently reviewing the implementation of RCS on iOS18 and are building it into our product roadmap. We will keep our customers updated as we firm up a launch date.”

Mood is the same at Optus “Rich Communication Services (RCS) remains under consideration as part of Optus’ longer-term product roadmap“, continuing “We continue to assess RCS alongside other strategic priorities as we shape our future roadmap.”

And look, I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here, but I think the problem is simple. There’s no PR win for any Telco alone on this, so it’s not being pushed as something they can get some consumer love for.

Why? Because if a single Network implements RCS within iOS it would only work within their network. Meaning if Telstra launched RCS in iOS then a Vodafone customer messaging a Telstra customer would likely not be visible as an RCS customer and thus be using old school SMS or MMS.

So what it requires is all three networks to launch together, and where’s the fun in that?

Well I’ll tell you where the fun is, for consumers.

Can we get the network leads at all three telcos to understand the simple issue of Image sharing? Some poor Grandmother with an Android phone is getting crappy low res hard to distinguish photos of their new baby grandchild from the kids on their iPhones. Who’s going to tech Grandma to use WhatsApp?

This technological change is a win for consumers, the problem we the people need to understand is that it does cost money. The Telcos need to implement software and possibly hardware changes on their network, so they would likely argue that using those funds to keep their networks switched on and running well is a higher priority – I think we all get that.

Optus’ statement to EFTM confirms that, saying “Delivering RCS would require significant investment and coordination across our technology and network platforms. Our current focus is on strengthening and evolving the products, services and network capabilities our customers rely on every day, including continued investment in network resilience and expanding coverage across regional and rural Australia.”

But please, just put it on the list and get it done, it’s frankly embarrassing to the Australian Mobile Networks as a whole – networks that for a long time I’ve described as world-class in so many ways.