[VoiceOps] AT&T Verizon to block text messaging

Fri Mar 5 11:56:22 EST 2021

Spotify is a terrible example. People listen to one song at a time, and
choose the songs they listen to.

Unwanted A2P SMS is more akin to unwanted commercial mail.

The receiver is required to put in effort and a few brain cycles to handle
the unwanted material, making a decision to dispose of it and placing the
mail in the trash/recycling.

The trash company has to pay to dispose of it, and the receiver has to pay
the trash company. The cost of the commercial mail is borne by the
receiver.

The A2P fees are a tax as a dis-incentive to the behavior, as well as the
increased costs by carriers of enforcing acceptable behavior and stopping
it outside of the rules.

I can see the argument that there is now an additional fee for businesses
to reach their customers. Yep. Mostly because enough bad actors took
advantage of the lack of regulation.

The market will find new and different ways that are less expensive to
reach their customers as a result.

Beckman

On Fri, 5 Mar 2021, Kent Adams wrote:

> 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/
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> Kent Adams
> Vice President of NextGen Network Operations and Development
> BCM One NextGen Communications Group
>

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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                 http://www.angryox.com/
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