RCS is a standard, but it needs hosted services for providers. Providers can either host themselves, or contract with someone like Google Jibe Cloud. Also, Google provides services for Android for providers that don't have it. iPhone depends on the provider so has less coverage.
Outside of China, it is de facto a Google thing due to Jibe not really in mood to interconnect with others, plus the fact that Google actually shoehorns RCS in countries where they think they can get away with it. Your statement "iPhone depends on the provider so has less coverage" basically bares this one. Two example:
1. Japan has already a different provider-supported thing +Message, (RCS-based but a different flavor because RCS is complicated), but Google is trying to win to them (and if I remember correctly, au actually jumped ship to Jibe recently-ish).
2. African carriers were confused because of RCS shoehorning without the carrier's consent: SMS reliably actually decreased because Google assumes that once you got an Android phone, surely you won't temporarily use that SIM on a "basic" phone for just an hour or two, right? Google just assumes that's offline, but for people still using their Android devices to reach their family on a farm who temporarily switched to a basic phone for its reliability and reach, their messages will still be send solely via RCS (which predictably won't reach the intended recipient because, of course, it does not have RCS).
Apple of course has its incentive to keep its users on iMessage, but it now accepts RCS (whether Jibe or not) and being "patchy" means that there are many, many carriers which did not implement RCS on their volition. I just imagine how would Google handle an oppressive government's request for interception on Jibe after carriers demonstrably shown that RCS was implemented without their consent, with fines and possibly prison sentences for illegally operating a carrier service to boot.
> plus the fact that Google actually shoehorns RCS in countries where they think they can get away with it.
This is the real thing that nails down "RCS" as a totally google thing. Google will forcefully enable RCS for people on carriers that want nothing to do with it. And in that case Google controls the entire process every single step of the way.
Just for the record, I am not necessarily disagreeing with "let's replace SMS", but Google can do it via a value-added service, which is much less regulated in most countries. Heck, Google already had it with Hangouts, and in my personal opinion it was just plain better than with Messenger. It was technically inferior with Whatsapp having E2E, but some people do prefer having a portable archive of their messages stored and access (much to the chagrin of cryptographers). However, killing it, resurrecting its corpse, and doing it again - well, it will not fare as everyone outside of Google predicted. Ron Amadeo had written a great piece about this in Ars Technica in 2021 (A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-...)
Messing with what is supposed to be a carrier standard, as I already think what is happening, puts Google to (in my opinion) a legally unreasonable position in some countries, and I won't be shocked it it will be treated as a carrier with licenses et al. (or rather, lack of licenses, which is just plain bad for Google). I won't be surprised if it turned out that many Googlers already knew that this is a bad idea legal-wise, but the higher-ups have approved this shoehorning.
It's indeed hard to overstate how much Google fumbled the bag given their position. Early Android adopters came from GMail and almost invariably used GTalk on desktop. We had video chat over 3G in 2011 before iOS. But somehow they had to rewrite the app and try to ship an half-assed SMS integration in Hangouts as reaction to iMessage. Google should really have tried buying WhatsApp more seriously, at least we'd have seen some real competition between WhatsApp and FB Messenger.
> I won't be shocked it it will be treated as a carrier with licenses et al.
So, the way it works:
The GSMA isn't some kind of monolithic entity with a great deal of power. Industry players with aligned interests come together, form groups and agree on specs and roadmaps. Technically, RCS should be mandatory with 5G. In practice, it took a great deal of time before a country actually enforced that (China).
Google has seemingly been at the helm of the RCS work group since 2015~2016 with the Jibe acquisition first, then the spec revamp, a.k.a. Universal Profile. RCS was essentially a zombie initiative after ~2012, Google saw an opportunity and filled the void. Telcos aren't stupid, they saw P2P messaging being wiped out by OTT services, and SMS is good enough for A2P. There was little incentive for them.
Now, after a lot of failed experiments, and pivoting from a semblance of federated network to a protocol almost controlled end-to-end, Google got what it wanted: iOS support in North America. The rest of the world is mostly lost to WhatsApp and friends anyway.
Carriers that are on board with Google need to enable the standard registration mechanism used by the iOS client. It shouldn't be a big deal by the way, IMS is central to 4G/5G deployments for VoLTE, VoWiFi, SMSoIP, ... but this changes one important thing from a legal standpoint: now the service isn't provided by Google through an ad-hoc client (Google Messages), but by your carrier.
That said, Google can sell SaaS solutions to carriers. It's up to them to comply with local laws when they decide to provide RCS, regardless of the backend.
I think the EU has bigger fish to fry with the DMA. But Google's tactics might eventually come to someone's attention, as they essentially cornered carriers into adopting Jibe, or giving up on RCS. Somehow the only country that didn't let that happen is South Korea.
Moreover Android could separate the RCS client frontend and backend, like it does for SMS and MMS. But realistically most OEMs don't seem to care, and third party SMS apps are fairly niche.
Re: lawful interception, when carriers switch to IMS registration (as required by Apple) they should also get access to Jibe's standardized API for law enforcement tools (there's a spec for that, I forgot its name). However, just the fact RCS payloads are E2EE in Android-to-Android communications (and soon Android-to-iOS too, hopefully) might already be illegal in some places.
Google flip-flopping around its mobile IM strategy for a decade and then around carriers with RCS is getting harder and harder to understand. Pulling the rug under carriers in developing countries, who weren't interested in the drug dealer marketing tactics, is only going to solidify Meta's dominance, as doing business with WhatsApp has proven to be a much safer and saner bet all along.
The US government is pushing IPv6 for government sites and contractors.
I think there needs to be a push for IPv6-first networks for companies. ISPs in the US are pretty good about IPv6. But network engineers learned IPv4, and don't want to change what works, so companies lag behind. Changing existing networks is hard, but IPv6 is good candidate for new networks. This includes writing docs and eventually the education so IPv6 is the default.
I doubt that most consumer routers expose this functionality. IPv6 NAT is rarely needed and should be avoided. Interestingly enough I stumbled upon a use case today. No IPv6 connectivity at my office but at my dad's house. Since a WireGuard tunnel is layer 3 I can't use router advertisements and the prefix is dynamic, so private IPv6 addresses and NAT66 it is. It was an exercise out of curiosity though, route64.org works much better for IPv6 connectivity.
There should be rule that ISP with CGNAT must offer IPv6 as an alternative. The US doesn't use CGNAT as much as other countries, but would help people stuck behind crappy CGNAT.
Yeah I this is the bigger issue. CG-NATs break things, you shouldn't be able to sell a pooled IP CG-NAT only service as broadband connection. Looking at you MetroNet
IPv6 is just as secure as IPv4. NAT usually combines address translation with a stateful firewall. I remember when they were separate things. IPv6 has the stateful firewall, all the same security but without the mess of address translation.
Also, if you have devices connected to WAN, then they are insecure because they are not NATed.
Solid state lithium batteries, which are starting to roll out now, are big enough jump. They have 50-80% more capacity which gives enough range for a day of driving. They charge faster so can charge on regular stops. They aren't flammable.
Cars don't need triple energy density, 600mi range and 15min charge is plenty. There is cost factor, but batteries have gotten cheap that isn't an issue. People talk about lithium shortage but it hasn't shown up.
Since Greenland is part of Denmark, Greenlanders are free to move to Denmark. There are 16k or so, but can't tell how many are Greenlandic or Danish heritage.
It isn't a law thing, but I'm disappointed that LTE Direct didn't go anywhere. That let's cell phone talk to each other over range up a km. The problem is that there LTE Direct requires implementation in the radio firmware, and the companies only did it for government phones. There is also 5G Device-to-Device and I haven't found out if that is supported more widely. There would also need to be frequency allocation, something CBRS (3.5GHz) would work but would be nice to get something with longer range.
You aren't going to get longer ranges with phone, the power and antenna are too limited. Walkie-walkie have bigger antennas (the stubby FRS sort of suck) and more power. Also, walkie-talkie don't have much bandwidth so the data rates would suck.
It's a business model thing, which seems to supplant law these days. Can't meter P2P. Intermediation to prevent usurpation of network effects is the name of the game in the modern day. No one will say that, but it's the quiet part left explicitly unsaid. The negative space of the incentive structure, if you will.
The social networks have all added public media and algorithms. I read explanation that because friends don't produce enough content to keep engaged so they added public feeds. I'm disappointed that there isn't a private Bluesky/Mastodon. I also want an algorithm that shows the best of what following posted since last checked so I can keep up.
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