2 March 2017, Barcelona, Spain – ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, today announced at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona, it launched its next-generation end-to-end (E2E) Public Cloud rich communication services (RCS) solution that helps customers reform service deployment, service interconnection and business models.

The solution fully satisfies global operators’ requirements for rapid access, capacity expansion and functionality of the RCS service. To be specific, the solution can help small and medium-sized operators and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) rapidly deploy cloud-based RCS at low cost, and help large operators put cloud RCS into trial commercial use to initiate users.

Based on the interoperability of cloud platforms, ZTE’s Public Cloud RCS platform supports interconnection between different operators including international branches, and can interconnect with their private RCS platforms through its RCS hub. It also achieves interconnection between operators and equipment vendors.

With the ZTE Public Cloud RCS solution, operators can develop RCS in flexible business models including service lease, service purchase and revenue share while greatly reducing investment costs and risks.

At the event, ZTE showcased all service functionalities of the Public Cloud RCS solution. The solution enhances traditional SMS and MMS functions to support instant messaging, group chat, messaging video and file, and location sharing. It also enhances the traditional call service to support voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), voice over WiFi (VoWiFi), multi-party audio/video call and Enrich Call.

ZTE also demonstrated its industry-first RCS set-top-box (STB) that uses RCS as the Smart Home entrance, and provides a multi-party video call function to converge with the Big Video service, thus promoting traffic consumption and monetising traffic. As Mr. Zhu Jinyun, SVP of ZTE, mentioned, RCS will be more than an entrance of Smart Home and will bring greater value to individuals, homes, governments and enterprises in the future.

In addition, the ZTE Public Cloud RCS solution opens standard application program interface (APIs) or software development kits (SDKs) to upstream and downstream players to establish a sustainable ecosystem. At the event, ZTE announced its cooperation with Voipswitch, a world-leading VoIP solution provider. Both parties will combine technical and marketing strengths, to introduce more Internet functionalities and UI customisation capabilities to RCS to offer users richer and better experiences, looking to building up a strong ecosystem.

The GSMA’s latest data shows that the RCS service has been put into commercial use with 50 operators in 36 countries, representing up to 156 RCS native terminals. Top telecom operators such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Internet giants such as Google have been actively promoting RCS development. As Mr. Zhu said, RCS can help operators upgrade basic telecom services, unify number entrances, and open telecom capabilities, which becomes an inevitable choice for operators. As a major player in RCS, ZTE will continue to work with partners to boost RCS development.