Enriched presence information on converged communication platforms: A quasi-experiment

Consumers have access to an increasingly wide variety of devices and modalities to communicate with others. The concept of enriched presence information helps users to harness such complexity by showing which device and modality is currently being preferred by their contacts. Operators can offer enriched presence information by utilizing recently developed converged communication standards like Rich Communication Suite-Enhanced (RCS-E). The present article tests the usefulness of enriched presence features for two prototype applications built upon RCS standards. A quasi-experiment shows that users become more positive about the usefulness of enriched presence information after trying out the two applications. Whilst findings suggest operators should introduce services that offer enriched presence information, our troublesome and lengthy prototyping process indicates that operators will not get the services to the market in time to hold off Internet players offering similar functionality.