FCC Forces California To Drop Plan For Government Fees On Text Messages (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: California telecom regulators have abandoned a plan to impose government fees on text-messaging services, saying that a recent Federal Communications Commission vote has limited its authority over text messaging. The FCC last week voted to classify text-messaging as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. "Information service" is the same classification the FCC gave to broadband when it repealed net neutrality rules and claimed that states aren't allowed to impose their own net neutrality laws. California's legislature passed a net neutrality law anyway and is defending it in court. But the state's utility regulator chose not to challenge the FCC on regulation of text messaging. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) was scheduled to consider the text-message fee proposal at a meeting next month but pulled the item off the agenda after the FCC action. "Under California law, telecommunications services are subject to the collection of surcharges to support a number of CPUC public programs that subsidize the cost of service for rural Californians and for low-income, disadvantaged communities, and provides special services for the deaf, the hard of hearing, and the disabled," the commission said in a statement Friday.

Comments

Torn

[Actually, I do RTFA]

On the one hand, taxing SMS texting is stupid. On the other, it's hard for me to imagine anything good coming out of this FCC. Is there some virtue to taxing SMS texting that I am missing?

They don't want California to die of thirst

[rsilvergun]

they want Californians to pay through the nose for water. While you're busy shit posting mildly racist right wing nonsense to Slashdot a small group of billionaires are buying up increasingly valuable water rights which they'll rent back to us.

If you're a Russian troll this doesn't concern you, but if you're in America you're about to get fucked. And yes, even if you're on the east coast since you'll have "water refugees" leaving the west and flooding your job market, lowering your wages...

Re:No need to feel torn

[ShanghaiBill]

the state needs money to fight the drought.

Obvious solution: If you have a shortage of water, raise the price of water.

Currently, California not only fails to discourage waste, they subsidize it.