Does RCS Business Messaging Work with AT&T on iOS 18 yet? (Dec 2024)

What's RCS Business Messaging (RBM)?

RCS Business Messaging (RBM) is the next generation of business messaging. It's the natural evolution of text messaging that brings the rich features we love from modern messaging apps directly into your phone's default messaging interface. Unlike traditional SMS, RBM delivers a multimedia-rich experience without requiring additional app downloads or complex setup processes.

Does AT&T support RBM on iOS 18 yet?

I've been seeing some posts like this one lately, so I thought I'd write a quick post to clear up some confusion.

Short answer: Not yet.

Long answer: AT&T has not yet fully adopted RBM on iOS 18.2. However, they have adopted RCS for peer to peer communications, which is a huge reason why we currently recieve RCS messages more broadly. RBM, however, is supported on other major carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon. AT&T is expected to fully adopt RBM in Q1-Q2 2025.

Why doesn't AT&T support RBM on iOS 18 yet?

While AT&T supports RCS for peer to peer communications (the Wall Street Journal has a great article about this), they have not yet fully adopted RCS for business messaging.

They adopted most of the infrastructure needed to send messages by using Google's Jibe infrastructure for sending and receiving messages, which is, after all, is a huge reason why we currently recieve RCS messages more broadly through peer to peer messaging.

However, AT&T is still struggling with two things for RBM: pricing and fraud prevention. RBM is sent over data instead of normal celluar networks, so they'll neeed to figure out how their carrier fees will work both for consumers and businesses. As for the fraud prevention, since RBM is a trusted channel (brand verification for businesses texting), fraud in this space would corrode the trust that consumers should be able to have in RBM. There's also an element to what businesses can be verified, e.g., should "McDonald's Potero Hill, LLC" be able to text customers as "McDonald's"? T-Mobile and Verizon are still working on these things as well but are allowing more easily verifiable businesses to text customers on their networks in the meantime.

What does this mean for businesses?

For businesses, this means that you can't yet use RBM to send messages to AT&T customers on iOS 18.2. However, you can still use RBM to send messages to user on T-Mobile and Verizon with iOS 18.1 and above. If you want to get started doing this--reach out to us here and we'll get you set up.

What does this mean for consumers?

For consumers, this means they won't see RBM messages from businesses until AT&T fully adopts RBM in Q1-Q2 2025. Consumers on T-Mobile and Verizon will see RBM messages from businesses on iOS 18.1 and above. So that means it'll be a little bit before everyone can get messages like this on iOS:

When will AT&T support RBM on iOS 18?

AT&T has not yet announced a date for when they will fully adopt RBM on iOS 18. However, we expect this to happen in Q1-Q2 2025.

What can I do to get started with RBM?

If you want to get started with RBM, reach out to us here and we'll get you set up. You can register RCS agents in advance and start sending out messages to customers on T-Mobile and Verizon with iOS 18.1 and above.