5G messages are here! How do you read text messages with audio, video, and location?

In order to respond to public concerns, People's Daily specially invited Lu Di, associate professor of the National Key Laboratory of Media Convergence and Communication of Communication University of China and expert of China Telecom's 5G Converged Media Laboratory, to answer questions and resolve doubts.

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Powerful functions, 5G messaging goes beyond imagination

"I think 5G messaging is the most likely 5G native innovative business form to be first applied on a large scale." Lu Di said that 5G messaging is RCS (Rich Communication Suite), that is, rich media. From the perspective of content form, in addition to text and pictures, 5G messaging can also provide multimedia content such as audio and video, location, and sliding cards. From the perspective of form, 5G messaging has more capabilities than traditional SMS services. It uses traditional SMS as the entrance, has built-in cards, sends real-time location, completes digital payments and other functions. Individuals do not need to open the APP, and can interact with the chatbot through the mobile SMS entrance.

Technology empowers 5G messaging to develop rapidly

Rudi believes that the development of 5G messaging cannot be separated from technical support at the three levels of network, terminal and IT.

IMS technology is mainly used at the network level. IMS technology is a layered, open, and integrated communication core network built on the operator network using IP technology. It can reduce the waiting time for users to communicate across operators, improve the quality of inter-network calls, and provide users with richer multimedia services. Lu Di said, "IMS is one of the important technologies for realizing 5G messaging. At present, my country's three major operators have completed the deployment of IMS network interconnection in the national mobile communication network and officially provide services to users."

At the terminal level, Ludi said: "5G message SDK is the core capability suite at the terminal level. Only terminals with 5G message SDK have the ability to receive 5G messages." At the IT level, Ludi emphasized: "5G messages are closely related to the development of AI technology." As an industry-oriented message service platform, the MaaP platform needs to combine chatbots, NPL (natural language processing), AI and other technologies.

5G messaging brings new challenges despite promising prospects

At present, users using 4G terminals still account for the majority. Can 4G terminals receive 5G messages? Speaking of this issue, Ludi said that 5G messages have an information "fallback" mechanism, and 5G messages received by 4G terminals are smart text messages. Similarly, 3G and 2G terminals can also receive 5G messages, but the form will be different.

Therefore, as a high-reaching application, 5G messaging will play an important role in government affairs, meteorology, banking, media reporting, etc. As for whether the arrival of 5G messaging will have an impact on certain apps, Lu Di believes: "APP is a form of information organization in the 4G era. 5G messaging has many functions and omits the process of users searching, downloading, and installing certain apps in the application market. Therefore, 5G messaging is likely to become a product form that replaces APPs in the 5G era."