Calculating Character Count of RCS Messages

Slater Rainney Twilion explains the importance of understanding message length and encoding in the context of Twilio's newly launched RCS Business Messaging platform, which affects how messages are categorized, processed, and billed. The article delves into the technical aspects of message encoding, particularly focusing on the differences between UTF-8 used in RCS and the GSM-7 and UCS-2 encodings used in SMS. RCS messages are categorized based on length and content, with different billing models in various regions, such as basic and single messages in most countries and rich and rich media messages in the US. The article highlights the complexity of character encoding, especially when using emojis and non-Latin characters, which can significantly impact the byte count of a message due to the variable-length nature of UTF-8 encoding. The discussion underscores the need for businesses to accurately calculate message length to avoid unexpected costs, as RCS messages have limits on basic message length and are subject to per-segment charges in certain regions.