Apple supporting RCS could create enough interest that it breaks their de facto control of the standard
I know from a friend that Facebook was looking into integrating RCS to Messenger (not Whatsapp somehow) and willing to be part of the Google federated RCS network, that also fell through, but I don't why.
I've been trying to gain some insight on why Google is not making it easy (possible?) to implement a third-party RCS app for Android and was reading about these APIs (clearly intended for OEMs).
> This means that third party apps aren't allowed to access RCS single registration APIs as they require carrier certification on the device.
Could just be Google passing the buck here, but this does sound like something the carriers would do, if given the chance.
That's not true. Mavenir offers an RCS platform that T-Mobile has been using up until recently. A renewed interest in RCS due to Apple supporting it might end up with their platform being more sellable.
https://www.lightreading.com/mobile-core/mavenir-t-mobile-co...
I work at a carrier that deployed a solution provided by WIT. Then around 2019-2020 Google decided they weren't interested in an open and interconnected RCS backend anymore.
Working against a single server implementation with a standardized client provisioning mechanism is much easier too.
This is pretty moot now. Google has effectively turned RCS into a proprietary protocol, they fully control the only relevant server implementation, carriers that want to interconnect have no choice but to deploy Jibe or use Jibe as a service.