In an era where attention spans are at their shortest and consumer behavior shifts rapidly, businesses face a crucial crossroads. The challenge is clear: how to engage not only customers but also employees in a world where traditional brand loyalty is fading. The solution lies less in chasing attention and more in understanding how to capture and retain it, presenting both a challenge and an opportunity for mobile operators in today’s changing landscape.

Operators who deliver advanced messaging and voice services, like RCS and VoLTE, will no doubt enhance their subscribers’ mobile experiences. However, in order to secure the greatest gain from these technologies, operators also will need to update their current network and infrastructure to meet LTE, IMS, and soon 5G standards.

Despite being more than 10 years old, Rich Communication Services, or RCS, will finally come of age in 2019. RCS is the GSMA-backed messaging successor to SMS, enabling new features like group chat, read receipts, is-typing indicators, and media file sharing. 

Isn't the text message dead yet? We've been talking about the death of Short Message Service (SMS) for over half a decade now. Surely it's dead by now? But alas, as Mark Twain once said, "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated," and this is also the case for the humble text message. Despite the rise of the Instant Message (IM) on IP services, SMS is not quite dead yet.

We're pleased to announce that Interop Technologies has been accredited by the GSMA as a Hosted RCS Solution Provider. This designation means that our RCS solution fully complies with RCS specification v1.2.2, which we demonstrated by passing a series of rigorous tests.