T-Mobile Users Send More RCS Messages Than Any Other Carrier

Contents

T-Mobile is dominating RCS messaging across US carriers

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Summary

T-Mobile handles over 613 million RCS messages daily, managing over 50% of US RCS traffic.
RCS adoption has nearly tripled in 5 years, with over a billion RCS messages sent daily in the US.
Apple’s adoption of RCS brought modern texting features but also unwanted RCS ads to iPhone users.

Google finally convinced Apple to bring RCS messaging to the iPhone with iOS 18 last year. As a result of this improved cross-platform texting experience, Google recently revealed that over a billion RCS messages are now sent daily in the US during the pre-Google I/O Android Show. A new report has now revealed that one US carrier is responsible for handling more than half of this RCS traffic.

The words 'Google Messages' against a blue and light green background

According to a report from Android Authority, T-Mobile told the publication that it handles over 613 million RCS messages per day on its network. If Google’s numbers are accurate, this means T-Mobile is managing well over 50% of the country’s RCS traffic.

We don’t know the exact numbers for the other two major US carriers, but it’s clear that T-Mobile is doing most of the heavy lifting right now — which makes sense, as the Un-carrier has been adding more users than any other US carrier lately.

T-Mobile is dominating RCS messaging across US carriers

Closeup of a phone showing RCS chats settings on its screen.

T-Mobile also noted that this figure includes traffic from MVNOs that use its infrastructure, such as Mint Mobile, Metro, and Google Fi. Even factoring that in, T-Mobile is clearly carrying a significant load.

The company also revealed that RCS usage has nearly tripled in the past five years. Back in 2020, around 224.5 million RCS messages were sent daily, according to the Un-carrier. Today, that number has surpassed 600 million, showing a massive spike in adoption.

That said, this growth in RCS was expected once Apple finally adopted the messaging standard, after years of pressure from Google. With RCS, both Android and iPhone users now enjoy modern texting features like typing indicators, read receipts, and rich media sharing, making messaging more seamless and less fragmented among users.

However, the unification hasn’t come without issues. The RCS spam and ads that Android users have long complained about have now started to show up on iOS as well.