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Comment by blendergeek | Hacker News Reader

> Google is just promoting carrier lock-in as a solution to Apple lock-in.

But, there is no "carrier lock-in" (at least not in the USA). In the USA, carriers are legally required to allow users to port numbers to and from any carrier thus creating competition rather than lock-in.

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You can use iMessage with an Apple ID without having any phone numbers associated with it.

There's no carrier required at all with iMessage. With RCS you HAVE to have a carrier.

I'd rather be locked into a phone number than locked to apple though.

And with iMessage you need to have an Apple account, at least for carriers you have choices.

With iMessage, you must commit to doing business with one company as long as you use the service. That is vendor lock-in and is what Google is complaining about. With RCS, there is no one company that you must do business with to continue using they service.

That's the same with WhatsApp/Signal/Telegram/others... unlike email which was distributed.

porting numbers is a royal PITA with some carriers. "legal" and "usable" are worlds apart, and the cost of screwing up a number port is potentially gigantic.

Porting numbers from one carrier to another is always possible (even it is "a royal PITA"). However, if I want to switch away from Apple, I will immediately lose the ability to use iMessage entirely. It is not just a PITA, it is completely impossible to switch providers when using iMessage.

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