Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

T-Mobile will soon add support for the RCS Universal Profile

By

RCS, or Rich Communication Services, is on the rise. Not only is the service growing, but it’s getting better too — and T-Mobile wants to lead the charge in the U.S. On Tuesday, March 13, the company announced it will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, a new RCS industry standard. The support will roll out to customers in a software update in the second quarter of 2018.

RCS is aimed at essentially replacing the aging Short Message Service (SMS) standard. It allows for a whole slew of extra features. For example, it supports things like read receipts, the sharing of location, high-resolution images, videos, audio, and more. It also is much better at handling group messages than SMS, and can even allow for video calling. In other words, when RCS becomes a reality around the nation, you will be able to treat it like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or WeChat.

Recommended Videos

RCS Universal Profile adds a few new features to T-Mobile’s flavor of RCS, but perhaps more important than that is that it will work with other carriers who have also adopted Universal Profile. Not all carriers adopted the same standard of RCS, largely because they adopted RCS before a universal, agreed-upon standard was released. RCS Universal Profile was released in 2016 after T-Mobile began supporting RCS.

Related

T-Mobile first launched RCS as part of its network in 2015 and now every Android phone the company sells supports it. According to the company, more than 30 million T-Mobile customers send more than 250 million RCS messages per day on the network. That might include you — it would be easy to miss that you’re using a new standard. You will still open the messaging app to send a message, type it out, and hit send. Over time, however, you will start noticing that your messaging app can simply do more. RCS may also present itself as a new way for businesses to interact with customers.

Of course, there are some compatibility issues. You might be a T-Mobile customer with an RCS-capable phone, but that doesn’t mean the recipient of the message is. Ideally, all carriers and all phones will soon support RCS, which means it will just become a fact of technology — and SMS can fade into oblivion.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper
Contributor
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
T-Mobile made a $325 suitcase that you may actually want to buy
A woman standing at the edge of a dock with the bright pink T-Mobile Un-carrier On suitcase.

T-Mobile has been pushing its customers to travel more with its Coverage Beyond initiative, and now the company is offering something completely new for travelers: the Un-carrier On smart suitcase. Smart suitcases have been around for a while, giving owners access to things like USB charging ports while on the go. However, T-Mobile's limited-edition carry-on might just be one of the best ever made.

The Un-carrier On offers a plethora of features perfect for frequent fliers, such as wireless smartphone charging, USB-C charging ports for phones and more, a removable rechargeable 10,000mAh power bank, and a flat top that serves as a portable workstation for laptops. The Un-carrier On also is a pretty solid suitcase — sporting Transportation Security Administration-approved combination locks, smart tags for easy luggage tracking, and 360-degree spinning wheels.

Read more
It’s late 2022, and Verizon and AT&T still can’t beat T-Mobile’s 5G network
The T-Mobile logo on a smartphone.

It’s been 10 months since Verizon and AT&T flipped the switch on their new C-band 5G spectrum, but it appears both carriers still have their work cut out for them if they want to catch up to T-Mobile.

Market analyses and independent tests have agreed for years that T-Mobile is the fastest and most reliable 5G carrier in the U.S. That’s not surprising as it had a massive advantage by holding licenses for the crucial midrange spectrum that provides the best balance between range and speed. While Verizon’s early high-frequency mmWave rollouts allowed it to boast raw speeds that were significantly faster, those were confined to about 1% of its subscriber base.

Read more
T-Mobile adding a free year of Apple TV+ to its most expensive plans
Apple TV icon on Apple TV.

T-Mobile today announced that it's giving subscribers to its most expensive mobile plan a free subscription to Apple TV+, which normally costs $60 a year. Those who are subscribed to the Magenta Max plan — which costs $85 a month for a single line — will get Apple's streaming service for free. If you've got T-Mobile's Magenta plan, which costs $70 a month for one line, you'll get six months of Apple TV+ for free.

The perk takes effect on August 31, 2022, and it's good for the foreseeable future. (A previous version of this story stated it was just for one year, but that's legacy copy on T-Mobile's website for the old perk that's being supplanted.)

Read more