RCS

Rich Communication Services (RCS)[1] is a communication protocol between mobile telephone carriers and between phone and carrier, aiming at replacing SMS messages with a text-message system that is richer, provides phonebook polling (for service discovery), and can transmit in-call multimedia. It is part of broader IP Multimedia Subsystem. It is also marketed as Advanced Messaging,[2] Chat, joyn, SMSoIP,[3] Message+ and SMS+... Google supports RCS on Android devices with its Android SMS app Messages. In April 2018, it was reported that Google would be transferring the team that was working on its Google Allo messaging service to work on a wider RCS implementation.[13][14][15] In June 2019, Google announced that it would begin to deploy RCS on an opt-in basis via the Messages app, with an RCS-compliant service hosted by Google rather than the user's carrier. The rollout of this functionality will begin in France and the United Kingdom, and it will be compatible with other RCS implementations compliant with the Universal Profile. In response to concerns over the lack of end-to-end encryption in RCS, Google stated that it would only retain message data in transit until it is delivered to the recipient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services