There is no encryption in RCS.

Google built its own extension. In fact, the RCS wiki states that they believe companies should implement it themselves. Although I think Wiki has a wrong quote about that.

Apple wants to work with the GSMA to build encryption. That in itself would be a good thing if all the big boys did this.

But I wonder one thing about the smart minds on t.net:
Do we want encryption in the back of SMS?

Why this question?
Because encryption can be broken and has to be arranged somewhere. There has to be a trusted central authority, a CA or something like that, that both parties trust. If that breaks down, there will be no traffic, or there will have to be a rollback.

SMS is so great because of its simplicity. Global standard. Yes, it can be picked up using the telephone pole in the middle. But I’m 100 times more likely to be digitally hacked than to have someone receive my text messages in the right place at the right time.

Next, I don’t think RCS is free to use through the provider. Just as SMS costs money to maintain, so too does RCS. Especially since it costs more data than SMS, who pays for that?

Through which provider is it actually sent and in what cases? Via my telecom company? Via Google? Via Apple or Samsung? Or does another third party send a copy to China for their own use?

My personal opinion is that SMS (or a very similar version) should continue to exist. No encryption, nice and simple and works worldwide. It uses hardly any data if set up correctly, because there are only x characters in the message. Rich text does not occur. No smileys or pictures.