A new service from major Spanish telecoms is giving people plenty to talk. Mobile device users in Spain and the rest of Europe could end up using a tool called Joyn. The tool will be a common instant messaging platform and will compete with other popular tools such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Gmail, Hotmail, Skype and more.
The decision about how to brand the new messaging format is still not official, although all indicators suggest that Joyn will be the Internet and videoconferencing service shared by millions of European mobile device users.
Until then, the industry will refer to this matter with the technical name Rich Communication Suite (RCS-e), a standard that promises to become a big tech bet for titans like Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange. Likewise, the new communication tool will be open to other telecoms operating in Europe, which presumably will adopt the tool within the next few weeks.
Five years of work
According to sources close to GSMA, the organization that represents the worldwide mobile communications industry, the Joyn project could be officially announced at the end of February during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) of Barcelona that GSMA is organizing. Around 800 telecom operators belong to the organization, which has been developing this new suite of communication tools for five years.
RCS-e technology was unveiled during last year's conference, where Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange promoted the format in order to disband third-party services like WhatsApp, BlackBerry Messenger, iMessage, Gmail, Skype and Hotmail. Similarly, Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook could become less relevant when having to compete with what looks like a guaranteed win that operators are promoting heavily.