Public-interest groups reiterated their call for federal regulators to protect text-messaging rights, framing the debate as far-reaching in terms of the potential implications for free speech, disability access and competition in the wireless industry.
Public Knowledge and other organizations want the Federal Communications Commission to rule that cellphone carriers cannot interfere with text messages – including those provided via common short codes – based on content or source so long as such transmissions are legal. The action sought by the groups would have text messaging and common short codes bound by common-carrier regulation, or at least subject to nondiscrimination rules under another regulatory classification.
“The problem is real and current; carriers are discriminating against competitors and claiming the right to exert broad editorial control over text messages, especially those addressed to or from short codes,” said Jef Pearlman, a Public Knowledge attorney. “As has been demonstrated with new communications media in the past, empowering consumers and ensuring the inability of the carriers to discriminate based on content is the best way to protect users both from unwanted communications and from the control
of a small set of corporate interests.”
The FCC has begun to receive a new round of public comments on the petition filed late last year by Public Knowledge and other groups.
“If mobile carriers can dictate the content of text messages on reproductive freedoms, as Verizon attempted to do with NARAL, they can do so on any other matter, and our ability to talk with one another, to campaign, to challenge orthodoxy, to bring new and unpopular ideas to public attention, to protect minority views, all these will be subject to the ultimate control of Verizon, or Cablevision, or any of the few national corporations that dominate telecommunications,” stated New York Assemblymember Richard Brodsky (D), chairman of the Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions.
Last year, NARAL Pro-Choice America became angered with Verizon Wireless after the carrier initially rejected its application for a short code it sought to blast wireless alerts to supporters. After the controversy gained national media attention, Verizon Wireless reversed course and gave the abortion-rights organization access to its network.
Rebtel, a Voice over Internet Protocol firm that offers low-cost international calling on mobile phones, also has complained about being turned down by Verizon Wireless, Alltel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. in its requests for short code-enabled text-messaging rights.
“The commission must act now to protect both consumer welfare and competition by ensuring that there is a vibrant marketplace for applications, services and content on wireless platforms,” Rebtel stated. “In doing so, the commission will protect consumer welfare and advance the public interest.”
Disability groups weigh in
Disability groups – including the American Foundation for the Blind, the American Association of the Deaf-Blind, the American Council of the Blind, the Coalition of Organizations for Accessible Technology and the Communication Service for the Deaf – come at the issue from a different angle.
“Text messaging, an increasingly significant communications mode, is not accessible to people with vision loss or many other disabilities unless such messages are converted to another form. As such, the classification matters a great deal. If defined as a telecommunications service, mobile-phone providers could be required to make their systems accessible, providing people with disabilities equal opportunities to use this important communications tool.”
‘Forced’ marketing relationships
Mobile-phone operators insist they do not block text messages exchanged between wireless subscribers, noting they employ filtering only to ward off unwanted and costly spam. The carriers said their short code policies are designed to protect subscribers from offensive, abusive or fraudulent material, though at least one national wireless operator – Verizon Wireless – said it withholds assignment of short codes for competition reasons.
As a policy matter, wireless carriers argue short message service and common short codes are information services that – unlike common carrier services – are largely unregulated.
“While it is true that wireless consumers send a text message to short code address, Public Knowledge’s request of the commission is not the ability for consumers to send text messages – consumers already enjoy that service – but the ability of companies and organizations to force wireless carriers to enter into a marketing relationship through the CSC [common short code] program,” cellular association CTIA told the FCC. “The continued misrepresentation of the real issue in this petition allows the petitioners to attempt to make this a consumer issue, when consumers are not being curtailed, marketers are. Moreover, it is consumers who would be harmed the most by the requested relief.”
T-Mobile USA, the fourth-largest national cellular carrier, underscored that latter point. “Perversely, the regulation they seek would prevent mobile wireless providers from protecting their customers from spam, spyware and viruses; from indecent messages; and from obscene or otherwise illegal content.”
