Stop the presses and alert the media: the GSMA has officially announced that in some distant, utopian future—perhaps right after we solve cold fusion and figure out where the second sock goes in the dryer—iPhone and Android users might finally be able to video call each other natively. The supposed savior of our fractured digital social lives? RCS Universal Profile 4.0 and its charmingly bureaucratic feature, Messaging-Initiated Video Calls (MIVC).

First, let’s dismantle the “Universal” in Universal Profile. In the tech world, “Universal” usually means “a standard that everyone agreed on in a conference room in Geneva but no one actually plans to implement in the same way.” To assume Apple will look at a GSMA press release and think, “Yes, let’s dismantle our FaceTime moat and let the green-bubble masses in,” is the kind of optimistic delusion usually reserved for people who buy lottery tickets as a retirement plan. Apple’s adoption of RCS was already the tech equivalent of a forced apology performed at gunpoint; expecting them to rush toward MIVC is like expecting a cat to bark because you showed it a manual on canine communication. Apple likes their walled garden, and MIVC looks suspiciously like a gate.

Then we have the “continuity” argument. The GSMA claims MIVC will ensure the continuity of conversation by letting you join an ongoing video call that you missed at the start. Finally! Because if there’s one thing humans crave, it’s jumping into a group call twenty minutes late, being the only one who hasn’t heard the context of the joke, and enduring that five-second lag of awkward silence where everyone stares at your forehead while you try to figure out if your mic is muted. It’s not “continuity”; it’s a digital jump-scare for everyone else in the chat. We already have this feature in every competent enterprise app from Zoom to Teams, yet the GSMA is acting like they’ve just discovered fire.

The article mentions this “paves the way” for natively supported video calls. “Paving the way” is industry code for “we have no idea when this will actually happen, but please keep paying your carrier fees while we figure it out.” We’ve had high-definition, cross-platform video calls for over a decade. They’re called WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. The only difference is those apps actually work today, whereas MIVC is currently a PDF of hopes and dreams sitting on a server in London.

Let’s be real: the push for native RCS video calls is less about user experience and more about carriers and legacy organizations desperately trying to remain relevant in a world where their primary function is being an expensive pipe for data. Why would any rational human wait for the “interoperable future” of RCS 4.0 when you can already see your nephew’s pixelated birthday party on a dozen other apps? But sure, “someday” we’ll have native interoperability. And maybe by then, the iPhone 45 Pro Max will finally come with a battery that lasts longer than the wait for this update to actually roll out to your carrier.