RCS Goes Live

Yes, a Rich Communication Suite implementation is going live in South Korea according to the GSMA, with the three major operators ensuring the necessary interwork. The services offered by the three South Korean operators include:

•  KT’s ’show moov’,
• SK Telecom’s ‘Mobile Messenger’ and
• LG Telecom’s ‘OZ messenger’,

with features such as phonebook driven buddy lists, presence capability that includes taglines and status, voice calls and messaging. KT’s ’show moov’ client application is available for mobile and PC platforms (a key feature of the RCS specifications say GSMA). Also, SK Telecom and KT are actively collaborating with fixed line services. For instance, KT ’show moov’ is integrated with one of Korea’s major portal’s e-mail, search services and SK Telecom’ s mobile messenger is linked with one of Korea’s most popular messenger ‘Nate On Messenger’. Well, that sounds sensible to me.

There are two elements here that I have harped about for some time as being key in getting a critical mass on any messaging service :

• Access from any device (PC’s as well as mobiles is a start)
• Links to popular messaging communities – ‘where the people are’.

South Korea has the almost unique situation for an IM service where the operator-driven NateOn overtook MSN in popularity as far back as 2005, so you could say S.Korea is a safe harbor to launch RCS. But the principle of ‘finding’ people on existing communities has been used successfully by several messaging aggregators. So the conditions should help, now that the moment of truth is here.

It will be interesting to follow the usage over the coming months. (link to article…) Have a look at the ShowMoov video below, I don’t understand a word of Korean but I think it gets the point across.