(Source: PRNewswire)BARCELONA, Spain, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- The GSMA today reported significant progress in the Rich Communication Suite (RCS) Initiative, a service providing interoperable, enriched communication capabilities such as in-call multimedia sharing, conversational messaging and presence-enhanced contact management, all accessible through a user's mobile phone contact list. The initiative has generated considerable momentum across a number of fronts since the GSMA brought RCS into its work programme in September 2008, including the delivery of the RCS Release 1 specification, the addition of new programme participants and the successful completion of interoperability tests.

"We live in a world where users want to be able to communicate and access and share information any place, any time, over any device," said Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer for the GSMA. "RCS supports these requirements, providing users the ability to launch a variety of enhanced communications, all from the personal contact lists in their mobile devices. Importantly, mobile operators are ideally positioned to deliver these new communications services to the mass market and drive mainstream adoption, with a combined user base of 3 billion people. It's a win-win for operators and for business users and consumers."

The GSMA recently issued the first technical specification for RCS, defining the feature set for the first version of the service and ensuring that vendors will be able to develop standard, interoperable implementations. The specification outlines the requirements for features including:

    --   Enhanced Address Book -- provides presence and capability         indications, enables users to initiate communications including         voice calls, video calls, file transfers or messaging, and allows         users to integrate multimedia elements, such as photos of contacts.    --   Rich Call -- enables users to exchange different types of content,         such as video or photos, during a call.    --   Rich Messaging -- expands on traditional instant messaging to         simplify and unify multiple messaging mediums and provide a richer         user experience.    

Future releases will include providing RCS functionality on other platforms such as PCs, offering a seamless user experience across PCs and mobiles.

"Today a mobile user utilises separate and distinct services, resulting in a disconnected communications experience. RCS addresses this issue by providing enhanced and integrated services that can be customisable," said Diane Myers, Directing Analyst for Service Provider VoIP and IMS at Infonetics Research.