Meta description: RCS is growing, but SMS still carries OTPs and fallback. Learn how to prepare your SMSC for RCS business messaging and earn from both channels.
RCS business messaging is moving from an emerging channel to a serious part of the operator messaging strategy.
Juniper Research expects business RCS traffic to grow from 125 billion messages in 2026 to more than 485 billion by 2030, a 286% increase. Authentication is expected to be one of the major drivers of that migration.
That does not mean operators can retire their SMS infrastructure.
RCS and SMS need to work together.
If a device cannot receive an RCS business message, Google explicitly recommends falling back to another technology such as SMS. For time-sensitive messages such as OTPs and fraud alerts, its guidance also recommends using an alternate channel such as SMS when RCS delivery cannot be confirmed.
So the practical question for operators is not “RCS or SMS?”
It is whether the messaging core is ready to manage both.
1. Know what RCS changes
RCS Business Messaging goes beyond plain text.
Brands can send rich cards, images, suggested actions and interactive conversational experiences directly through the user’s messaging application.
The GSMA Universal Profile provides the industry framework behind RCS interoperability and includes the technical enablers needed for business messaging and Messaging as a Platform.
The ecosystem is also continuing to develop. In July 2026, GSMA published Universal Profile 4.1, adding improvements around security, interoperability and messaging efficiency.
An operator preparing for RCS therefore needs to think beyond adding another messaging API.
It needs an architecture that can make delivery decisions across channels.
2. Keep SMS ready for fallback
Consider an OTP.
The enterprise attempts RCS delivery first. If the subscriber’s device or network does not support RCS, the interaction may need to fall back to SMS.
That fallback cannot feel like a second-class path.
It still needs to arrive quickly, follow the correct route and be recorded accurately.
Google’s RCS Business Messaging documentation confirms that when a device does not support RCS, the platform can return an error and the sender should use another technology such as SMS.
This makes SMSC modernization relevant even as RCS adoption grows.
The SMSC becomes part of the continuity layer behind the richer messaging experience.
3. Review routing before adding another channel
Adding RCS makes routing logic more important, not less.
Operators need to determine:
Does the subscriber support RCS?
Should this message use RCS or SMS?
When should fallback happen?
Which SMS route should be used?
How should the traffic be charged and recorded?
A legacy messaging environment built around fixed routes can make those decisions harder to manage.
hSenid SMSC allows routing rules to be configured through a management interface, including actions such as relay and reanalysis. Its SMPP Gateway can connect to multiple SMSCs, manage traffic from ESMEs and SMPP clients, and support load balancing.
Those capabilities are useful when operators are modernizing the SMS side of a wider multichannel messaging architecture.
4. Make sure fallback can handle sudden volume
RCS fallback creates another operational consideration: capacity.
If an RCS service becomes unavailable or a large group of subscribers cannot receive a particular RCS campaign, traffic may move to SMS.
The SMSC must be able to absorb that change without turning fallback into a delivery failure.
This is something we see from the infrastructure side at hSenid Mobile. Our systems handle nearly 50 million transactions daily.
At that scale, capacity planning is not theoretical.
The hSenid SMSC includes overload protection that buffers excess capacity when traffic exceeds the configured Message Delivery Attempt level and sends the messages subsequently.
For an operator preparing for RCS business messaging, SMS capacity should therefore be tested as part of the RCS rollout rather than treated as an unrelated legacy system.
5. Do not lose charging visibility
RCS introduces new commercial models, but SMS revenue does not disappear overnight.
Operators still need to know which messages travelled over SMS, which enterprise generated them and how those transactions should be charged.
hSenid SMSC supports real-time and offline charging for prepaid, postpaid and roaming subscribers and generates detailed CDRs in flexible formats for billing.
That becomes particularly important when an enterprise campaign can move between RCS and SMS.
Without clear records, multichannel messaging can create billing complexity rather than new revenue.
6. Treat SMSC modernization and RCS deployment separately
An SMSC does not automatically become an RCS platform.
The GSMA ecosystem distinguishes between RCS network providers and RCS Business Messaging or MaaP platform providers.
The practical architecture can therefore include an RCS platform for rich messaging while the SMSC continues to provide reliable SMS processing and fallback.
The hSenid SMSC material reviewed for this article documents SMS routing, SMPP connectivity, charging, bulk messaging and overload protection. It does not state that the product itself provides native RCS Business Messaging.
That distinction matters when planning an upgrade.
Prepare for coexistence, not replacement
RCS is growing quickly, but the transition will not happen with every subscriber, enterprise and market moving at the same time.
That means the best SMSC solution for an operator’s modernization strategy needs to support the SMS side of a broader messaging environment reliably: routing traffic correctly, handling fallback volume, maintaining charging records and continuing delivery when traffic spikes.
RCS can provide the richer experience.
SMS can provide the reach and fallback.
Operators need a messaging core prepared for both.
