Some of South Africa’s mobile operators are putting in the legwork required to provide Rich Communication Services (RCS) support for iPhones running iOS 18, but none yet supports the protocol.

RCS, a protocol and standard developed and maintained by the GSMA cellular industry association, is marketed as a replacement for SMS and MMS, and offers a host of modern features that make texting akin to chatting in instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, complete with high-resolution image and video support, and group chats.

Apple’s iMessage has features similar to RCS, but these are incompatible with Android. It’s why Google has been pressuring Apple to implement RCS for years. When communicating with Android users, Apple iMessage chats would show a green instead of blue speech bubble to indicate insecure SMS was being used instead of the more secure but proprietary Apple Push Notification protocol used by iMessage.

Rival Google, on the other hand, has been a vocal proponent of RCS since 2019, and by 2021 was openly criticising Apple for not adopting RCS in iMessage, instead resorting to the legacy SMS system. Apple was reluctant to adopt the protocol, allegedly because it was bad for business.

Apple finally yielded with the announcement of the incorporation of support for RCS into iOS 18, the release of which coincided with the introduction of the iPhone 16 line-up earlier this month.

But one of the key benefits of RCS (compared to SMS), namely end-to-end encryption, will not be available for messages sent between Apple and Android users. The GSMA is, however, working to provide the necessary encryption. Encryption for iPhone-to-iPhone and Android-to-Android RCS messaging is supported.

Telkom, MTN and Vodacom

“Telkom has submitted requirements to Apple to enable RCS. Testing will be conducted and, once done and the test results have been approved by Apple, we will communicate the availability of the RCS service on iOS to our subscribers,” a Telkom spokesman said.

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MTN South Africa said RCS is in a feasibility analysis phase internally. It did not provide a launch date. Vodacom South Africa did not give any indication that RCS support for Apple devices on its network will come anytime soon. A spokeswoman told TechCentral in a terse statement in response to questions that Vodacom “is yet to pronounce on its support for Apple iOS”.