Interop Launches Cloud-based RCS with Social Presence

By Erin Harrison
Executive Editor, Cloud Computing

Wireless solutions provider Interop (News - Alert) Technologies has rolled out a cloud-based version of its rich communication services (RCS) that includes version 5 capabilities, such as support for a network address book and social presence. The network address book synchronizes a user’s contacts among different devices including mobile phones, tablets, and PCs.

The cloud technology option minimizes up-front costs and speeds time to market, according to Steve Zitnik, EVP and chief technology officer of Interop Technologies.

“Our client-agnostic, cloud-based solution now includes multiple RCS version 5 capabilities in line with the Blackbird and Crane releases, resulting in the most advanced, feature-rich RCS solution available today,” Zitnik said in a statement. “By deploying in the cloud, operators can provide their subscribers with this state-of-the-art communication option quickly and cost effectively.”

The new RCS also has an expanded social presence, allowing users to receive real-time information, such as availability, location, favorite link, and portrait icon, for each of their contacts.

In addition, the network address book and social presence features are aligned with the GSMA (News - Alert)-managed RCS Blackbird and Crane releases, which include subsets of priority RCS version 5 features. Using an XML document management server (XDMS) and presence server, Interop’s service stores social presence and service capability information and makes it available in real-time to RCS users.

Since last spring, the cloud-based Interop RCS solution has also supported legacy messaging interworking, an RCS version 5 feature providing backward compatibility with short message service (SMS) and multimedia message service (MMS).

Interop has made the improvements available in its interoperability testing (IOT) environment currently in use by multiple RCS client vendors and smartphone manufacturers. As client and handset vendors release new versions of RCS client software, they can continue to test against the Interop RCS solution to ensure that standards compliance and interoperability are achieved.

RCS, branded as “joyn” by the GSMA, is designed to give subscribers communication options including video chat, one-to-one and group messaging, file transfer, and real-time exchange of image or video files during communication sessions.

The service also allows operators to compete with popular over-the-top (OTT) services without any being required to make any expensive changes to their current network, company officials said.

Interop Technologies will demo its improved RCS solution at OMA Demo Day on February 27 during Mobile World Congress (News - Alert) in Barcelona.