Rebtel Blog

In-Flight Calls With Verizon

As you might know, some of us from the Rebtel crew are over in sunny San Francisco, California to attend the Web 2.0 Expo. The Expo, which ended on Friday, was really awesome and featured some very heavy names from this web world of ours. A selection of some of the people we were fortunate enough to see include Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media), Jonathan Schwartz (CEO at Sun Microsystems), and Marc Andreesen (co-author of the first web browser Mosaic and currently with Ning).

We will cover some of the most interesting talks from a Rebtel perspective in a later post. To make sure you don’t miss it, you can go ahead and subscribe to our blogs RSS Feed.

Anyhow, on our flight from Chicago to San Francisco we noticed that Verizon offers a solution for in-flight calls. That’s great you might say, considering you are not (yet) allowed to use your mobile phone on board an aircraft to call your business acquaintance or your friend waiting for you on the ground to pick up you up. Phones on planes are pretty much ubiquitous and not new thing in any shape or form so nothing really remarkable there. Although, what did catch our attention, was the price they charged. If you’re a sensitive person, you might want to hold on to something. To call with Verizon on a United Airlines flight, you have to pay the ridiculous amount of $10 per minute + taxes and a setup fee (see the image above). God knows how much that setup fee is but the point is, for us that are accustomed to making international calls for just a few cents per minute, this was a pretty shocking revelation. Trust me.

So what are the learnings here? Well, you will be able to call use your mobile phone on flights sooner rather than later so maybe Rebtel should get into the market of offering ultra-cheap international calls while in the air? You know what, maybe be will! What we do know for certain is that we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible and we still have a long way to go on our road towards making sure as many people as possible have the opportunity to make international calls for the cost of a local call.

Best wishes from San Francisco,

Alex

Verizon’s Smoke At The FCC Is So Thick You Can Cut It With A Knife

I want to go on the record. Rebtel does not promote the use of alcohol, tobacco products, guns, other weapons, or illegal drugs. Nor does Rebtel advocate or have anything to do whatsoever with intense profanity or violence, graphic depiction of sexual activity, nudity, or hate speech.

We are not SPAMers or purveyors of fraudulent materials or activities that are restricted by law to those over 18, such as gambling or lotteries.

Nevertheless, if you take the time to wade through the nearly 200 collective pages of legal mumbo jumbo recently filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel and CTIA,  The Wireless Association, you might actually come away thinking we are. Or could be.

In fact, the only thing we do at Rebtel is give consumers an alternative way to make an international call from their mobile phone, for which we charge them a few pennies per minute instead of mobile operators ridiculous rip-off rates.

As you might guess, the carriers are not wild about our service even though it’s super simple and very low cost to implement. Just ask our friends at Skype, Jajah and Jaxter which are now blatantly copying Rebtel’s invention.

That, however, is an entirely separate kettle of fish.

The issue at hand before the FCC is very straightforward. And we totally agree with AT&T, which wrote in its filing that it is important for the FCC to be clear as to what this proceeding is about, and more importantly, what it is not about.

AT&T wrote in its filing: “This proceeding is not about the ability of wireless customers to exchange [text] messages with other wireless customers. What is at issue is whether wireless carriers can be forced to enter into joint marketing arrangements with content providers through the activation of short code campaigns.”

But for some reason they got it backward. The issue concerning Rebtel is all about the ability of wireless customers to exchange text messages with other wireless customers, and has absolutely nothing to do with marketing using short code campaigns.

As I’ve discussed here in the past, short codes, among other uses are how text messages (SMS) get sent from a company’s web site to an individual’s phone in the U.S.

What’s happening is the carriers customers want to send themselves a text message from the Rebtel web site and they want to receive text messages that their friends, family and work colleagues send to them from the Rebtel web site.

But Verizon and Alltel won’t approve a Rebtel short code campaign that would allow those messages through. And while AT&T has approved Rebtel’s campaign, it transmits the messages as flash SMS so they disappear if you don’t immediately save them when they arrive.

All these games because the carriers don’t like what’s in the messages: local phone numbers where you live that connect you to friends abroad.

Verizon wrote in its filing that it does not block text messages, except those addressed to its subscribers that are captured by its spam filters, or that are affirmatively selected for blocking by its subscribers.

But there is no mass mailing of text messages going out from Rebtel that might be trapped by a SPAM filter. Instead every single messages is 1:1 sending initiated by the Verizon or AT&T or Alltel or whatever customer to either themselves or from a friend.

What the carriers are doing is really no different than if Verizon started listening into customers voice calls and disconnecting the calls if someone talks about a better deal over at AT&T.

So, let’s cut through the baloney. This is about business.

We created Rebtel with a very simple vision: Take the phony out of telephony.

Our mission: Create a genuinely good, honest, trustworthy global communications service that saves people money.

And we set out in 2006 to build a company on just three values: Always take the customers side, whatever you do must be clear and simple, and have no fear; do the right thing.

That approach has paid off. Rebtel blew past 1 million regular customers months ago and we’re now tripling in size every three months in terms of new customers, revenue and minutes carried.

In contrast, I think Verizon’s approach of trapping customers into multi-year contracts and then milking them for every penny possible is beautifully captured in its request for the FCC to dismiss the petition filed by Public Knowledge, Free Press and other leading consumer advocacy groups.

Verizon argues that the complaints in the petition refer to isolated instances that don’t warrant government involvement. If consumers want to join a short code campaign that Verizon Wireless has not enabled, they may switch to a provider willing to enable that campaign.

Okay, Verizon which providers do you suggest? And, by the way, will you wave the penalty fee on my contract when I do?

An open letter to U.S. Reps. Edward J. Markey and Cliff Stearns

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)

AT&T: Please stop playing games

If you’re reading this you most probably already know that Verizon prevents its customers from sending SMS to themselves from the Rebtel web site. These SMS messages contain local U.S. phone numbers that allow Rebtel users to make low-cost or free international calls.

Verizon also prevents its customers from receiving SMS from Rebtel customers outside of the U.S.

Well, it now appears that AT&T Wireless has started playing games with SMS, targeting messages that its customers send to themselves or receive from friends using Rebtel services both from http://www.rebtel.com as well as from Rebtel’s free Facebook conference call service, Group Talk.

To avoid the indictment of blocking Rebtel SMS, it looks like AT&T has turned all SMS from Rebtel services into what’s called Flash SMS. As a result, the messages are only temporarily stored when displayed; as soon as you close the message, it disappears and is not automatically stored in the phones Inbox.

I’m told by my more technical colleges that this is no coincidence that there is a trigger value that has to be set by AT&T to make the SMS into a Flash SMS, instead of a normal message.

I know this is happening because I’m an AT&T Wireless customer and experience their nasty trick regularly when I receive Group Talk notifications for free conference calls. And, friends who are also AT&T subscribers report the same experience.

So Shame on you AT&T Wireless. This is a dirty trick right out of the Verizon playbook, and it’s time to stop.

Rebtel played by the rules. Now it’s Verizon’s turn.

Welcome all Verizon and AT&T customers!

That probably sounds a bit odd coming from Rebtel these days. But yesterday Verizon and AT&T rolled out new plans that give U.S. customers unlimited airtime minutes for a flat fee of $100. And flat fee plans are music to our ears even if the carrier continues to block its customer SMS.

Unlimited airtime minutes means anyone who subscribes to one of these plans now has the ability to make unlimited free international calls to 39 countries around the world using Rebtel’s Smart Call system.

But even if they’re not willing to jump through the few hoops that make the international portion of call free, they can still take advantage of our super low-cost rates for calling any phone, anywhere in the world.

And eventually, we hope that Verizon will come to its senses and stop preventing its customers from sending standard SMS text messages to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel.

Late last week I spoke with Robert Poe, a reporter for VoIP-News and DailyWireless about this issue. As any good reporter should do, Robert contacted Verizon after our call. Verizon (no surprise) denies that it is blocking SMS that their customers try to send to themselves or that their friends try to send to them from the Rebtel web site.

Robert declined Rebtel’s help to test our claims, which will make his findings all the more powerful when they come out. In the mean time, with the kind help of my comrade Fredrik Henning, I thought I’d take a minute to shed some light the mechanics of this problem and why Verizon is not telling the truth.

To be able to send SMS to people in U.S. from a system platform, not person to person, a short code number is required to identify the sender of the messages. Therefore every provider of messaging services has to apply for a dedicated or shared short code (a 5-6 digit number) from the Common Short Code Administration (CSCA), which Rebtel had done and received.

The reason for this bureaucracy is that the U.S. market applies interconnect charges differently than other countries. In the U.S. mobile recipients pay for incoming SMS. In contrast, people in Europe do not pay for incoming SMS because the operators in Europe are being paid by the originating operators to cover the cost of delivering the SMS to the recipient.

Rebtel wants its customers to be able to send SMS to their friends that are mobile subscribers in U.S. mobile networks. Rebtel wishes only to send SMS on behalf of the users, and not perform any unsolicited bulk messaging (a.k.a. SPAM or advertising).

So, despite what Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson tells the press, every SMS sent from Rebtel’s system is sent on behalf of the users who have requested that Rebtel send SMS to their friends or to themselves.

But it doesn’t end here. To get a short code implemented in a U.S. mobile operators network a specification of traffic flow and commands has to be submitted to each operator for approval of the process of OPT-IN and OPT-OUT, insuring that the recipients really do wish to get charged for receiving SMS.

Rebtel provided its specification of this process and got it approved by some operators, but not all, namely, Verizon.

So the bottom line is we’ve played by the rules. Our specification follows all requirements to get a short code approved with regards to OPT-IN and OPT-OUT. Yet, Verizon refuses to approve it. What’s that about? Why is this allowed?

We think it’s now time for the industry to stand up to this bullying.

We think the CTIA the trade association “dedicated to expanding the wireless frontier needs to reprimand Verizon and demand they play by the rules.

And if that doesn’t work, then we think it really is time for the FCC to do something about Verizon and its blatant anti-competitive abuse of power.

Verizon: Forget the Short Codes. Let Your Customers Send SMS to Themselves and Friends.

Stupid Rebtel. We should have known better.

Soon after Public Knowledge, Free Press and others filed a petition asking the FCC to rule that text messaging and related short codes are protected from unjust and unreasonable discrimination. Rebtel, which was named in the petition, received some attention in the press, and Verizon was none too happy about it.

I’m talking about the Verizon that reported $1 billion in earning last quarter while adding 2 million wireless customers to bring its total to 65.7 million.

The Verizon that went to Capitol Hill recently as part of the CTIA to ask that they be spared from the indignities of burdensome regulation on their text-messaging services and short-code offerings.

The same Verizon that told BusinessWeek that Rebtel can still text-message our customers to offer their service.

And the very same Verizon that is now preventing its customers from sending standard SMS text messages to themselves and their friends if they contain local phone numbers issued by Rebtel.

Goliath didn’t like the negative attention it received in the press regarding its treatment of little David. It doesn’t want people, especially people at the FCC, to know that Verizon violates their customers freedom of speech every day.

So they contacted Rebtel just before the New Year and told us that they would stop blocking their customers SMS IF Rebtel would shut down all PR on the short code issue and send a letter to the FCC in praise of Verizon and its new openness and cooperation with Rebtel.

Being the trusting souls that we are, we complied. We stopped talking to the press. And when the press called during January we explained that Verizon had seen the light, that we were talking with Verizon and expected to have an announcement from the two companies shortly.

At first Verizon complained because there were some straggler stories appearing on the Web. And then there was silence. No response to our mail. Return phone calls came to a halt. Nothing.

It took us a week or two but we finally realized that we had been tricked. Verizon had tricked us into silence. Well, shame on us! We should have known better. And now we do.

But the true shame and the real crime is that Verizon customers are being prevented from sending SMS messages to themselves and their friends from the Rebtel web site.

We’re not asking for special access or treatment. We just want Verizon customers to be able to send standard text messages to themselves and their friends regardless of the content. That’s what free speech is all about. But Verizon thinks differently.

Because it doesn’t like what’s in those SMS messages, local phone numbers that will connect Verizon customers to their friends and family abroad for just pennies per minute instead of the highway robbery charged by Verizon for the same call and because they don’t like the viral nature of the Rebtel service, Verizon shuts them down. It turns off their customers right to send SMS.

Well, live and learn, as they say. But I promise, this one ain’t over! This David, for one, is pissed.

Verizon: Time to walk the walk

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.