Telstra ends Australia's long RCS wait

Alex Zaharov-Reutt, Global AI and Technology Editor | Published 17 Oct 2026

Australia's biggest telco has finally put dates on the calendar. Telstra will start switching on RCS messaging for Android customers from 16 November, with iPhone owners to follow once Apple delivers its December iOS update, and the whole rollout is due to be finished by the end of 2026.

After more than two years of carefully worded "we're working on it" statements, the messaging gap between iPhone and Android owners on Australia's largest mobile network is about to close.

Telstra has confirmed to iTWire that RCS, short for Rich Communication Services and the modern successor to SMS and MMS, begins rolling out to Android customers from 16 November 2026. iPhone customers will be able to start using RCS after Apple's December iOS release, and Telstra says the rollout will be complete by the end of calendar year 2026.

Best of all, there's no opt-in hoop to jump through. RCS is enabled by default on the Telstra mobile network across consumer, small business and enterprise services, so most customers will simply find their messaging gets better.

A two-year wait for something the rest of the world already had

Apple announced RCS support for the iPhone at WWDC in June 2024 and shipped it in iOS 18 that September. iPhone owners in the US, UK and plenty of other markets switched it on almost immediately.

Australians did not. Unlike iMessage, RCS on the iPhone depends on the mobile carrier enabling it, and none of the big three local telcos did. When the iPhone 16 went on sale in 2024, Telstra said RCS would not be available at launch and that it would explore the work needed once partners made it available here. A year later it was still telling journalists RCS was unavailable for iPhones in Australia.

As recently as this month, Telstra was still only saying it was moving towards enabling RCS and actively working out how to support it. So today's firm dates represent a genuine shift from roadmap talk to rollout.

Android owners haven't been entirely in the dark. Google Messages has been delivering RCS between Android phones in Australia using Google's own servers, filling the gap where carriers hadn't launched the service. The missing piece has always been the iPhone, and with it, every mixed iPhone and Android group chat in the country.

Think of RCS as SMS and MMS rebuilt for the smartphone era. Messages travel over mobile data or Wi-Fi rather than the old SMS channel, which unlocks the features people already take for granted in iMessage, WhatsApp and Signal:

High-resolution photos and videos, instead of the blurry, compressed mush MMS has been delivering between iPhone and Android for years

Typing indicators and read receipts, so you know when someone is replying or has seen your message

Proper reactions, with emoji Tapbacks showing up as reactions rather than clunky text like "Alex loved an image"

Inline replies, letting you respond to a specific message in a busy group chat

Better group chats that work properly when iPhone and Android users are mixed together

End-to-end encryption between iPhone and Android, which Apple added for RCS in iOS 26.5

There's a silver lining to Australia's late arrival. iPhone owners here skip the early, somewhat limited version of Apple's RCS implementation and land straight on the more mature one. iOS 27 adopts the newer RCS 2.7 standard, adding inline replies and full Tapback support for conversations with Android users.

One thing RCS won't do is turn green bubbles blue. iMessage remains Apple's own service, and chats with Android users will still appear in green. They'll just be a whole lot richer.

Very little, which is exactly how it should be. According to Telstra:

It's on by default. RCS is enabled across Telstra's consumer, small business and enterprise mobile services, with no plan change or add-on required.

You need a data connection. Your compatible phone must be connected to Wi-Fi or mobile data for RCS to work. Without one, messages fall back to standard SMS.

iPhone owners need iOS 27 or later. Apple devices must be running iOS 27 or newer, and RCS for Telstra iPhone customers starts arriving after Apple's December iOS release. If you've been putting off updates, now's the time to stop.

Most Android phones are already ready. The majority of Android devices support RCS out of the box, so no software update is typically needed.

Once the rollout reaches your phone, it's worth checking that the RCS Messaging toggle is switched on in your messaging settings, particularly if you've fiddled with it in the past.

Telstra moving first is a big deal, but it doesn't solve everything on its own.

What about Optus and TPG Telecom? As of this month, Optus was describing RCS as still under consideration for its longer-term roadmap and flagged the significant investment involved. TPG Telecom, which runs Vodafone, said it was reviewing RCS and building it into its product roadmap. Neither has announced dates.

Will it work across networks? RCS really shines when both sender and recipient have it. If an iPhone user on Telstra messages an iPhone user on a network that hasn't enabled RCS, that conversation is likely to fall back to SMS and MMS. How quickly Telstra's rivals follow, and how the telcos interconnect their RCS services, will decide how much of the country actually benefits.

What about Telstra-powered MVNOs? Brands that resell access to Telstra's network weren't mentioned in the announcement, so customers of those providers will want to check whether, and when, they're included.

Which iOS version, exactly? Telstra says iPhone RCS starts after Apple's December iOS release but requires only iOS 27 or later, so the December update appears to be the trigger that switches it on for Telstra customers. Likely iOS 27.2.

It has taken far longer than it should have, but Telstra has finally done what iPhone and Android owners have been asking for since 2024. From 16 November, Android customers get carrier-grade RCS, and from December, iPhone owners join them.

For the grandparent with an Android phone who's been squinting at pixelated photos of the grandkids sent from an iPhone, this is real, tangible progress. For everyone stuck in a mixed group chat, it means typing bubbles, proper reactions and replies that actually make sense.

The ball is now firmly in the court of Optus and TPG Telecom. Telstra has shown it can be done, and its customers will soon see what they've been missing. Expect pressure on the rest of the industry to ramp up quickly, because nobody wants to be the network where the photos still come through blurry.