“I am very excited about this. SMS has been the standard for 20 years, with lots of good things but also some quite negative downsides, especially around fraud,” he said in an interview. “I’ve been meeting with the local telcos to talk about the upsides of RCS; this will be much safer for consumers.”

SMS is virtually a case of “plug and play” for fraudsters, Gerstmann said, given that no checks are required to verify that they are who they’re claiming to be. Scammers can currently claim to be anyone from toll companies to banks, and Australians lost about $26.9 million in 2023 to SMS scams.

“The difference with RCS is that every brand needs to go through a vetting process that’s done by the mobile operator, so the likelihood of a fraudster being able to impersonate your bank or your logistics company is much lower,” Gerstmann said.

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“Consumers will be more willing to accept and trust messages from brands, and the total fraud numbers will decrease. Spam messages have been a real problem for the industry globally, and it’s something that RCS can and will address.”

When will RCS be available in Australia?

Gerstmann said Australia’s major telcos were still in confidential negotiations with Google about commercial terms ahead of a likely 2025 launch date.

A TPG spokesman said, “We are currently reviewing the implementation of RCS on iOS18 and are building it into our product roadmap. We will keep our customers updated”.

A Telstra spokesman said RCS “remains on our radar as we continue to work with our device partners to explore and enable technologies that will improve the experience for customers on Telstra’s network.”

An Optus spokesman said the telco had nothing to share at this time.