Google is rolling out RCS/Chat in Messages for all US users regardless of carrier

Earlier this year, Google surprised people by bypassing carriers and enabling RCS for users in the UK. At that time, Google said they would love to do the same in the US, but they had to work with carriers. Still, people wondered why they couldn’t just bypass the carriers altogether as they did in the UK. Google is finally doing exactly that.

It’s been a long road for Google’s push to use RCS as its main messaging platform. Back in April of 2018, the company paused work on Allo in favor of the “Chat” RCS-based messaging standard. “Chat” lives inside Google’s Messages app and it’s used when both parties have RCS enabled. It brings typing indicators, larger group chats, larger file transfers, chat over Wi-Fi, and more. Starting today, Chat/RCS works in the Messages app regardless of your carrier.

There were signs of this happening a few weeks ago when people discovered a way to enable RCS in the Messages app for any carrier. The four major US carriers recently announced their plans to support RCS with a new app, but Google was suspiciously not mentioned. So now Google is taking matters into its own hands.

All you’ll need to use RCS in the US is the Messages app from Google. In the next few weeks, you’ll see a prompt in the app asking if you’d like to enable “Chat” features. Alternatively, you can go into the Settings and look for “Chat features.” You can tell if a conversation is using RCS by the “Chat message” text in the edit box. Google says they expect this service to be broadly available in the US by the end of the year.

Messages (Free, Google Play) →

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Source: Google

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