An open letter to U.S. Reps. Edward J. Markey and Cliff Stearns March 3rd, 2008  

Dear Representatives Markey and Stearns:

As leaders of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, we ask that you consider taking up an important telecom issue that has real impact on lower-income residents of the U.S. and the future of competition in mobile voice communications.

I’m referring to the short code issue now before the Federal Communications Commission in the form of a petition for declaratory ruling that refusing to provision a short code to a customer is unjust and unreasonable discrimination, and violates the law.

This issue is important because short codes are what make it possible in the U.S. for companies to send SMS – text messages – to individuals.

Today, mobile operators still have the ability to act as Big Brother gatekeepers even after a company has received a dedicated or shared short code from the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA), and submitted a specification of traffic flow and commands to each carrier for approval of the process of OPT-IN and OPT-OUT to make sure the recipients really do wish to receive the SMS.

In other words if Verizon, AT&T, Alltel or T-Mobile don’t like what’s in certain SMS, they have the ability to block the message from going through to the consumer.

The FCC petition filed in December by public interest groups Public Knowledge, Free Press and Mobile Commons, cited Verizon’s rejection of NARAL Pro-Choice America’s text messages to its supporters as a prime example of carriers interference with political speech.

Violating American’s sacred First Amendment rights is downright dumb. And Verizon quickly stopped blocking NARAL’s SMS as soon as The New York Times shed some light on what Verizon was up to.

But what may be a better case for why regulation is needed is the U.S. carriers’ refusal to accept SMS from Rebtel, which is also cited in the petition as an example of how Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Alltel have taken advantage of a perceived regulatory hole to discriminate against competitors.

For example, Verizon – the self-proclaimed “most profitable wireless company in the U.S.” –prevents its customers from sending SMS to themselves from the Rebtel web site because they contain local U.S. phone numbers Verizon customers can use to call friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the rip-off rates charged by Verizon. Many of these rates escalate beyond $1 per minute, with profit margins that rival the oil companies.

At a hearing last Monday on network neutrality and network management, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin said, “The time has come for a specific enforceable principle of nondiscrimination.”

We think Mr. Martin is right and should now apply that same position to the short code issue, and stop the arbitrary blocking of consumer access to certain services.

We also think it’s the FCC’s job to figure out where you draw the line between unreasonable discrimination and reasonable, fair business practices.

And, if we really live in a country of free enterprise, we think it’s high time to let the customer – the people – decide what information they choose to receive by SMS, and not have it dictated by the big mobile operators.

We hope you agree with us on this issue and closely monitor the FCC proceeding. And would the FCC believe that it lacks authority to correct these wrongs, we encourage you to introduce legislation that makes clear that the FCC should prevent wireless carriers from unreasonably discriminating against businesses using short codes to interact with their customers.

Sincerely,

Rebtel (the people’s global communication company)

By: alexander drewniak