December 5th, 2007 posted by alexander drewniak

Skeptical?  You bet!  But we’re in good company.

Verizon is talking openness out of one side of its mouth while the other side is shutting down Rebtel’s application for a harmless short code campaign that would allow customers to set up new local numbers for global contacts with one quick SMS. 

Verizon has been putting on the PR push to position itself as all open and friendly just in time for the January auction of the “C-Block” of 700MHz radio spectrum.   

It’s a good story. In a recent BusinessWeek interview, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam announced that as part of Verizon’s new “any app, any device” future, his company would support Android, Google’s open mobile operating system.  He goes on to say that this change is far from a sudden course correction — that he’s been trying to figure out how to make Verizon open for a year.  Yet it was only just a couple of months ago that Rebtel’s application for a short code campaign was summarily dismissed.

Short codes are those five-digit numbers that connect you to someone or something instead of dialing an entire phone number.  You may have used a short code to vote for your favorite American Idol, for example.  Rebtel wants these short codes to give customers a fast and easy way to create new local numbers for calling abroad instead of having to first dial a Rebtel operator or use the Rebtel web site.  

But to get short codes you have to apply to each carrier for a campaign, which Rebtel did through its U.S. service provider. 

Sprint said, yes.  AT&T said it might approve our campaign, but only with a bunch of changes, which we’re working on.  And Verizon, Alltel and T-Mobil all said, no. 

According to Adam Liptalk’s story in the New York Times, experts say private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry — that the laws forbidding carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages. 

Rebtel, however, believes this is a Net Neutrality issue – whether carriers or Internet service providers should have a voice in the content they deliver to customers. And, in our opinion, the Verizon rejection of Rebtel’s short code campaign is nothing short of an anti-competitive abuse of power, much like their rejection of Nara Pro-Choice America’s short code campaign was interference with political speech and activism. 

Just like with Nara, we want Verizon to reverse its decision on Rebtel.  Why can everyone from Burger King to Barak Obama use short codes but not Rebtel customers?

And, given his opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, I would think Walt Mossberg should be a loud supporter of this cause. 

Regardless, talking the talk is all well and good, but if Verizon really believes in openness we think it’s high time it walks the walk, too.  

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