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Comment by inigyou | Hacker News Reader

There is a carrier neutral WhatsApp, called SMS.

Whatsapp etc. only took off because SMS is so limited, and the mobile companies are so profit-focused they can't make a decent competitor.

(how is whatsapp paid for again?)

It's not all about profit as European SMS is now free. It is however about decentralisation stifling feature development - a trap we run into again and again, from email to IRC to SMS to Fediverse/ATProto.

WhatsApp is one company so if they want to enable sending images they can just do it, and they don't have to coordinate with anyone else. MMS was a failure because you couldn't be sure if your recipient would actually get it, or if your carrier would actually let you send it.

SMS made you pay by character. RCS is the current free alternative.

so instead using Meta product you suggest using Google product, great alternative for Europe independence

it's like when they wanna get rid of Visa/MC by switching to EU apps, which will require Google/Apple verification, what an improvement...

RCS is an international standard. Google only adds their client (and running the service if your mobile provider doesn't).

Don't know what EU apps are you talking about, but yes, mobile apps need Google services. Web interfaces don't.

please tell me ONE app for Android other than Google Messages I can use to send and receive RCS, it surely won't be problem since it's international standard same as SMS, so there must be plenty apps available...

Pretty much all banking apps for Android won't work without Google Play Services, so once again if you are using Lineage or Graphene, you are still stuck with US company to use your European banking services on the phone.

> please tell me ONE app for Android other than Google Messages I can use to send and receive RCS, it surely won't be problem since it's international standard same as SMS, so there must be plenty apps available...

Nice red herring. The number of implementations is irrelevant here, although Wikipedia says Samsung had one too.

Here's the standard, try Ctrl+F "Google": https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/technologies/netwo...

TLDR there is only Google product if you wanna use RCS on Android phone

nobody cares about standards, if they are pretty much monopolized by one comapny

Cell towers failed in my region after a hurricane. SMS is pointless in that situation.

So can internet.

Not neutral if you are Apple. That's their battlefield

Not even remotely close.

For natural disaster emergency annoucememt it is more reliable than whatsapp.

Cell Broadcast yes, SMS no.

Isnt the one just "mass usage" of the other?

Like Cell Broadcast just duplicates the SMS on carrier level?

Nah, Cell Broadcast has a lot less overhead since it does not have to do any routing or delivery confirmation and such. The load does not scale based on recipients which makes it far more reliable during an emergency.

Sorry, maybe I did "carrier replication" wrong - I used the word in a sense of "it is duplicated at the local cell by the towers", instead of getting "fed with 1mio receivers in region X by the telco servercentral HQ"

Im wrong, I guess?

Cell broadcast, depending on the emergency level set by the sender, also makes your phone vibrate until you read the message, and may also cause it to play a loud siren noise. Which is the sort of thing you want in a real emergency.

Why, because it can't be monetized by Facebook?

Because it doesn't do the job well. It's difficult to send any media, group chats are a pain, international messages often incur fees, it doesn't work on wifi-only, and so on.

Whatsapp is used by a lot of "neighbourhood watch" groups, so you'd need an IRC-like channel to replace it.

Yes, no, try to have group chat with SMS, and tell me how that went...

RTS is the SMS replacement and is quite old. And as evidence it works, I direct your attention to the ubiquitous iMessage, which only "couldn't" interop with Android because Apple was trying the vendor lock-in approach and actively enshittifying its own users' experience and blaming it on Android users.

Do you mean RCS or are these 2 seperate things?

Which it also had to do because SMS doesn't have half its features, like encryption and sending images.

Assuming you mean RCS, to which Google built a proprietary E2EE extension, remains the only client with no API to build off of and if I recall requires play attestation.

Hardly a complete solution, it devolved into a Google power grab, in my opinion.

For once I half agree with apple when they say its less secure, as apple-to-google comms are not E2EE like they are for google-to-google. While that is fixable with a hack its still a hack, not part of the protocol.

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