Industry claims protection in control over SMS, short codes

The controversy over whether the Federal Communications Commission should regulate short code-related text messaging has opened a floodgate of weighty policy questions – from network management to consumer protection to free speech – that could make resolution of the matter far more difficult than federal regulators and warring factions may have anticipated.
“Wireless carrier practices regarding SMS [short message service] and short codes are designed to protect consumers, not restrict them,” cellular association CTIA told the FCC. Indeed, the wireless industry maintains there is considerable confusion about the issue – pointing out text messages and short codes are actually distinct services.
“Wireless carries do not block SMS between wireless consumers, but they do use filtering to protect consumers from unwanted and costly spam,” stated CTIA. “With regard to short codes, wireless carriers have policies to protect their subscribers from offensive, abusive or fraudulent material, and refuse to load short codes onto their networks that they reasonably believe pose such threats.”
Censorship?
Just how did text messaging and wireless carrier oversight of common short codes evolve into a fracas over free speech and become a lighting rod in the already combustible network neutrality debate?
Last year, NARAL Pro-Choice America bumped heads with Verizon Wireless after the carrier initially rejected its application for a short code it wanted to use to transmit wireless alerts to supporters. After the controversy gained national media attention, Verizon Wireless reversed course and gave the abortion-rights organization access to its network. Then Rebtel, a Voice over Internet Protocol firm that offers low-cost international calling on mobile phones, began to complain loudly about being turned down by Verizon Wireless, Alltel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc. in requests to secure short code-enabled text messaging rights.
Verizon Wireless has said it is standard practice to withhold short codes from companies with whom it competes. The No. 2 mobile-phone carrier now argues the FCC should deny a petition filed by Public Knowledge and seven other groups to subject text messaging and short code subject to non-discrimination provisions of telecom law.
Regulation will harm
In addition to claiming there are no legal grounds for the government to police text messaging and short codes, Verizon Wireless said federal regulation is apt to backfire in attempting to solve a problem that largely doesn’t exist.
“Intruding into this well-functioning part of the wireless market as the petition demands would not only be unwarranted but would harm consumers,” Verizon Wireless stated. Moreover, the carrier argues imposition of federal guidelines in the wireless industry’s use of short codes could violate its constitutional free-speech rights.
CTIA refers to short codes as an information and billing service, but public-interest groups and some Democratic lawmakers maintain they are a lot more – seeing codes and texting as inseparable enablers of free speech for the masses.
“Text messaging is a critical new medium for speech whose growth is far outpacing mobile voice calling,” stated Public Knowledge and other groups that also happen to be major advocates of net neutrality. “Mobile carriers cannot be allowed to leverage their license to use the public’s airwaves in order to control who may say what to whom. These carriers have demonstrated that, given the chance, they will interfere with speech, and in fact continue to do exactly that to this day.”
As such, federal regulators suddenly find themselves ensnarled into a nasty battle cast judgment on whose free speech is it, anyway.