<div dir="ltr"><div><div>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.<br><br></div>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?<br><br></div><div>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. <br><br></div><div>Thanks,<br><br></div><div>Kent<br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 11:40 PM Peter Beckman <<a href="mailto:beckman@angryox.com">beckman@angryox.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Fred Posner wrote:<br>
<br>
> On 3/4/21 12:52 PM, Oren Yehezkely wrote:<br>
>> Overall it is a move by a giant to hurt small carriers and customers of<br>
>> other companies by reducing functionality and raising their cost of<br>
>> doing business.<br>
><br>
> Nothing I see impacts sms for individiual <-> individual or SMB <-><br>
> individual at low volume. In fact, it's specifically stated those do not<br>
> need to register.<br>
<br>
A2P: Application-to-Person. Business to Individual.<br>
<br>
P2P: Person-to-Person. Conversational SMS between two Individuals.<br>
<br>
A2P: "50% Off at The Cloud Store This weekend" sent to 100,000 people<br>
<br>
P2P: "Nah, I'm gonna stay home and watch The Expanse tonight" sent from<br>
one person to one very special person<br>
<br>
If you have a good relationship with your vendor(s), and you follow and<br>
enforce CTIA Guidelines on acceptable volumes of P2P traffic, you can get<br>
your traffic treated as P2P and avoid A2P tarriffs.<br>
<br>
If you're sending business stuff, even 10-20 of the same or very similar<br>
message to multiple people, it's A2P, and you'll pay the fee or lose your<br>
P2P designation.<br>
<br>
P2P isn't going away, you just have to earn it by keeping watch over your<br>
SMS traffic.<br>
<br>
<br>
Is it a significant change from "send anything you want to anyone without<br>
consequence or cost?" Sure... though Verizon did this LAST YEAR, so I'm<br>
not sure why AT&T doing it now is a sky-is-falling event. T-Mobile WILL do<br>
it too, so plan now.<br>
<br>
If your business model breaks because of the tarriffs for A2P SMS traffic,<br>
bummer for you. Time to "pivot" or go bankrupt.<br>
<br>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Peter Beckman Internet Guy<br>
<a href="mailto:beckman@angryox.com" target="_blank">beckman@angryox.com</a> <a href="http://www.angryox.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.angryox.com/</a><br>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Kent Adams<br></div>Vice President of NextGen Network Operations and Development<br></div>BCM One NextGen Communications Group<br></div></div>