Rich Communication Suite Initiative

Key telecom industry players join forces to speed up the introduction of interoperable rich communication services

Today, a group of key operators, infrastructure and device vendors comprised of Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, TeliaSonera, Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, announced a joint effort to facilitate the evolution of mobile communication towards rich communication.

Together the participants have agreed upon a set of features originating from profiled IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) standards as well as implementation guidelines with the intention of having interoperable rich communication services available in 2008.

Consumers are now experiencing the power and the promise of converged and rich communication such as instant messaging, video sharing and buddy lists, which have introduced a new user experience.

Consumers expect that these capabilities are available on any type of devices and that there is open communication between devices and networks. With the Rich Communication Suite (RCS) these customer expectations can be fulfilled, and ever evolving services can be offered to enhance users’ experience. The core feature set of RCS includes the following services:

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Enhanced Phonebook, with service capabilities and presence enhanced contacts information
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Enhanced Messaging, which enables a large variety of messaging options including chat and messaging history
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Enriched Call, which enables multimedia content sharing during a voice call

The RCS Initiative is the joint effort of leading industry players to speed up and facilitate the adoption of applications and services that provide an interoperable, convergent, rich communication experience.

“IMS is a pivotal technology for advancing communications to a new and enriched level of converged multimedia services,” says Michael Clever, head of Next Generation Voice and Multimedia, Nokia Siemens Networks. “The RCS initiative is the catalyst to help IMS take-off with cross-network interoperability from Day One. As part of this forum, we are accelerating IMS and SIP development so consumers can enjoy a completely different communication experience faster.”

To speed up the introduction of rich communication services, the participants in the RCS Initiative has already:

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Defined a core feature set, leveraging existing standards, and implementation guideline specifications for an interoperable IMS-based communication suite. The IMS is an important architecture for fixed and mobile networks that bring these capabilities to the consumer in an interoperable way.
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Developed reference implementations of the services for commercial devices, and validated the underlying requirements and technical specifications for service interoperability
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Conducted interoperability testing in multi-vendor environments to ensure and verify the maturity of the RCS feature set

To ensure services availability in 2008, the RCS Initiative will continue to drive testing and interoperability in a multi-operator environment, as well as sharing the RCS specifications with relevant industry forums.

RCS showcase in Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

The RCS Initiative will present early results of these efforts in a showcase including a presentation and a live demonstration of the initial feature set.

RCS Initiative presents the showcase at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in the seminar theater in Hall 7 on Feb 11 at 13-14 hours and Feb 13 at 12-13 hours.