With the release of iOS 18 just a few weeks away and many new features already introduced earlier this year, one of these features has many archiving providers raising the alarms with their customers about potential archiving and compliance gaps due to their inability to capture RCS (Rich Communication Services) message type.
RCS, or Rich Communication Services, is an advanced messaging standard introduced with iOS 18 that elevates interactions between iPhone and non-iPhone users beyond traditional SMS and MMS. It offers a range of enhanced features, including high-resolution media sharing, read receipts, typing indicators, and file-sharing capabilities of up to 100 MB. Additionally, RCS supports multimedia elements like stickers and GIFs, personalized group messaging, sender verification for businesses, and read receipts to help track customer communications.
The majority of Archiving and Capture solutions targeting regulated firms to help them capture and review their text messages today depend on capture that happens directly from major carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Late last week, many of these archiving and capture providers began sending out notices to customers that they would not be able to support RCS message archiving with the release of iOS 18 later this month. They state that Mobile Device Management (MDMs) and carriers can not, from day one, provide a complaint option for these message types.
We share the shock felt by their customers. Since the iOS 18 RCS beta was released, we have been working and testing RCS messages on iOS and are ready to go. We were surprised to hear that competing firms have been suggesting their customers do these things instead:
We are proud to say our solutions do not face these issues. Since 2017 we have been developing and delivering audit quality iMessage and SMS capture solutions with no compliance gaps.
With the development methodology built into our company culture, we are proud to say that our solution will support RCS from day one with no customer interaction needed. Simply put, quoting Apple, “It just works”.
We are not stopping there. We will soon make a major announcement of how we intend to support the broader industry as they face a compliance nightmare that could result in billions of dollars of new fines. While we can’t share the news yet, we want those affected, all of whom are not FirmScribe customers, that we’re working hard to help you.
This Story continues to develop……
