According to a report by Juniper Research, revenue from rich communications services (RCS) business messaging will represent 18 per cent of operators’ business messaging revenue globally by 2029; growing from just 3 per cent in 2024. The report identified that depleted trust in the SMS channel will drive enterprises to migrate business messaging traffic to RCS, to benefit from the brand verification status.
As per the report, to maximise long-term growth of RCS, service providers need to ensure price parity with SMS and streamline the verification process for businesses, by offering a standard process across network operators and aggregators. In turn, this will enable RCS business messaging users to add custom branding and increase the acceptance of RCS channels amongst mobile subscribers.
Meanwhile, over-the-top (OTT) channels, such as WhatsApp, provide the biggest challenge to this growth over the next four years. The channel, which is expected to reach 1 trillion global business messages by 2029, also offers rich media and brand verification capabilities to enterprise business messaging users. To combat this rise, RCS service providers must promote the fact that RCS is native to smartphone operating systems.
Commenting on the report, Molly Gatford, research author, Juniper Research, said, “Enterprises have begun exploring alternatives to SMS, and RCS is a key tool that operators can use to combat migration of messaging traffic to channels outside of the telecoms ecosystem. Whilst enterprises’ choice of channel will vary, RCS will remain a key element of an operator’s business messaging portfolio alongside SMS.”
