[VoiceOps] AT&T Verizon to block text messaging

[Kent Adams]

The views being espoused by many here seem to be myopic and rely on the
assumed existence some sort of corporate conscience which will be regulated
by free market principles. My position on these surcharges is that the
intentions behind them are good, and their current advertised use comes
from a place of positive motivation to serve the customers of AT&T and
Verizon. However, the implementation leads us to a place we have seen many
times, a place where free market principles are stifled and a corporate
oligarchy chooses winners and losers in moral or ethical arguments rather
than being impartial arbiters seeking to eliminate some common enemy of the
people. Allow me to posit some hypotheticals which are possible under the
current implementation before you pass judgement against naysayers of the
aims of this surcharge scheme.

Imagine a service such as Spotify where a subscriber base pays a monthly
fee for access to media content which is varied. The producers of this
content come straight to Spotify and in-turn their content is made
available to the Spotify base. Spotify's subscribers, in this scenario, get
some content they desire, but some content they don't. So they complain
about the content they don't want forced into their ears, and Spotify
decides rather than blocking this content completely, they shall force
providers of that content to pay a surcharge to continue forced delivery of
their content to it's subscriber base. The customers are initially pleased
with the drop in unwanted content, but some providers choose to pay up and
continue to deliver the content. Over time, Spotify, in analyzing the
content that is paying the surcharge realizes there is a genuine business
opportunity. They acquire one of the providers of this content category,
exempt that provider's content from the surcharge, and thus make the
playing field unlevel in a way that benefits themselves. Alongside this,
they also find content which supports ideals important to it's corporate
aims and exempt that content from surcharges, but increase the surcharge on
content which is contrary to their corporate ideals, and no consideration
is provided in this matter concerning the ideals of their subscriber base.
Are you still in support of Spotify's surcharge scheme?

Under my hypothetical what starts out as a win for the business and a win
for the subscribers becomes something that would strike many as unethical
and counter to free market principles and principles of free speech. For an
example of how a telecom company can utilize its influence and internal
data over it's base and become at odds with free market principles I assert
that we need look no further than the events leading to CPNI. For an
example of how a company can move its content management in a way that is
at odds with the principles of free speech I assert that we need look no
further than the current polarization of social media platforms. The lack
of transparency around these surcharges, particularly who is subject to
them and why, and the lack of an appeal process which is open, makes
attempts at being impartial, and has a specific set of guidelines for the
types of content that are being targeted, and the assurance that
subsidiaries and strategic partners will not be given favorable status
gives me great pause over whether the actions under discussion in this
thread are a net positive or are the start of something that will be a net
negative. For these reasons, I support the skepticism and would encourage
this group not to wound our own at the expense of defending a self-serving
action of large cellular network providers.

Thanks,

Kent

On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 11:40 PM Peter Beckman <beckman at angryox.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Fred Posner wrote:
>
> > On 3/4/21 12:52 PM, Oren Yehezkely wrote:
> >> Overall it is a move by a giant to hurt small carriers and customers of
> >> other companies by reducing functionality and raising their cost of
> >> doing business.
> >
> > Nothing I see impacts sms for individiual <-> individual or SMB <->
> > individual at low volume. In fact, it's specifically stated those do not
> > need to register.
>
>   A2P: Application-to-Person. Business to Individual.
>
>   P2P: Person-to-Person. Conversational SMS between two Individuals.
>
>   A2P: "50% Off at The Cloud Store This weekend" sent to 100,000 people
>
>   P2P: "Nah, I'm gonna stay home and watch The Expanse tonight" sent from
>   one person to one very special person
>
>   If you have a good relationship with your vendor(s), and you follow and
>   enforce CTIA Guidelines on acceptable volumes of P2P traffic, you can get
>   your traffic treated as P2P and avoid A2P tarriffs.
>
>   If you're sending business stuff, even 10-20 of the same or very similar
>   message to multiple people, it's A2P, and you'll pay the fee or lose your
>   P2P designation.
>
>   P2P isn't going away, you just have to earn it by keeping watch over your
>   SMS traffic.
>
>
>   Is it a significant change from "send anything you want to anyone without
>   consequence or cost?" Sure... though Verizon did this LAST YEAR, so I'm
>   not sure why AT&T doing it now is a sky-is-falling event. T-Mobile WILL
> do
>   it too, so plan now.
>
>   If your business model breaks because of the tarriffs for A2P SMS
> traffic,
>   bummer for you. Time to "pivot" or go bankrupt.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
> beckman at angryox.com
> http://www.angryox.com/
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------_______________________________________________
> VoiceOps mailing list
> VoiceOps at voiceops.org
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/voiceops
>


-- 
Kent Adams
Vice President of NextGen Network Operations and Development
BCM One NextGen Communications Group
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/voiceops/attachments/20210305/7d87d4d0/attachment-0001.htm>