Android will finally get its Chat solution next year, hopefully
By Dieter Bohn
Yesterday at a small, business-focused GSMA event in New Jersey, Verizon's SVP of consumer products, Aparna Khurjekar, announced that Verizon will launch support for RCS messaging in "early 2019." The move is potentially significant as RCS is the new texting standard set to replace SMS just as soon as carriers around the world update their systems to support it.
More specifically, RCS Chat will replace SMS if carriers update their systems to support the "Universal Profile," the version of RCS technology that allows messages to interoperate cleanly between carriers. Currently, very few do; in the US, that list includes Sprint, US Cellular, and limited support on T-Mobile. Other carriers like AT&T and Verizon use a proprietary texting system. Redditors have been maintaining a spreadsheet of carriers that do and don't support the Universal Profile.