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Verizon Charges New 'Spam' Fee For Texts Sent From Teachers To Students (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A free texting service used by teachers, students, and parents may stop working on the Verizon Wireless network because of a dispute over texting fees that Verizon demanded from the company that operates the service. As a result, teachers that use the service have been expressing their displeasure with Verizon. Remind -- the company that offers the classroom communication service -- criticized Verizon for charging the new fee. Remind said its service's text message notifications will stop working on the Verizon network on January 28 unless Verizon changes course. (Notifications sent via email or via Remind's mobile apps will continue to work.) The controversy cropped up shortly after a Federal Communications Commission decision that allowed U.S. carriers' text-messaging services to remain largely unregulated. Verizon says the fee must be charged to fund spam-blocking services. Remind said in a statement: "To offer our text-messaging service free of charge, Remind has always paid for each text that users receive or send. Now, Verizon is charging Remind an additional fee intended for companies that send spam over its network. Your Remind messages aren't spam, but that hasn't helped resolve the issue with Verizon. The fee will increase our cost of supporting text messaging to at least 11 times our current cost -- forcing us to end free Remind text messaging for the more than 7 million students, parents, and educators who have Verizon Wireless as their carrier."
...them teachers switched to something like WhatsApp.
It's another reason to dump Verizon.
Send emails. Products that are tied to phone numbers suck.
The problem is *not* that Verizon has decided to go after one particular School SMS provider.
Rather, Verizon has decided to charge bulk SMS providers (in this case, Twilio) a per-text-message fee. This fee is said to help pay for Verizon's anti-spam efforts.
Twilio then decided to pass this fee to customers in the exact amount Verizon charged.
Two other providers in Canada (Rogers & Bell) already charge Twilio similar fees, and other carriers are expected to do so soon.
Remind just happens to be a Twilio customer. But all Twilio customers {and customers of similar SMS services} are affected.
Is that spammers never believe the messages they send are spam.
Sorry, I don't need a bunch of BS being sent to my cell phone. If I'm in school, tell me in person. If it's after hours, leave me the hell alone.
Why not look into other carriers? I bet that t-mobile and other carriers would be very interested in giving a sign over switch deal to as many lot of the 7 million subscribers they currently carry.
How dare you try to tamp down an opportunity for another tempest in a teapot? This is my chance for daily pointless internet outrage and cyber-lynching. I will not have you sedating the rabble with your soporific "facts".
Please cease and desist immediately.
I hate services that text me stuff. There is a priority order for messaging:
* Look at it within a few days = email
* Look at it within a few minutes = text
* I need to communicate with you NOW = phone call & voice mail
I keep finding these services crop-up that use text & phone calls for things like "Don't forget that next Tuesday is a field trip! And Friday will be blue shirt day!" I do not need my phone buzzing during a work meeting for that.
My daycare uses the Remind app. Since I'm on Verizon, I received an in app message about this coming down the line the other day. However; my son's Pre-K teacher (who is registered with the county's school system) uses an app called Seesaw Family which is more like a messenger-style app. She has it set up so that only parents and approved extended family are allowed to sign up for her messages. She can send group messages or individual messages as needed and we can send private messages back to her to ask questions. It's free for us (parents) to use, but I'm not sure if she, or her affiliated school, had to pay a setup fee. Apps like that might be worth other teachers looking into.
This isn't really about SPAM texts, email services like GMAIL and others, permit heavy senders to register (for free) as bulk email senders - I'm sure Verizon could do the same, no this is about adding a new revenue stream. "Hey we can add a CHARGE and make more MONEY! YEAH that's the ticket!"
I don't understand why Remind wants to use SMS so badly? Install an app and communicate through that. This isn't a problem.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Including anti spam measures, all in cost per message that stays within the telco's system was less than 1 x 10 ^-5 cents per message.
All in cost included EVERYTHING: site loading, backbone network, data center, electricity, vendor support, etc.
SMS infrastructure is incredibly cheap. A telco is not giving up much when a plan includes unlimited messaging.
The only thing that inflates cost is when the message goes into another telco's system and a border fee is charged.
Caveat: Did this 10 years ago. I am sure costs have increased (dripping sarcasm).
I don't know which horse to bitch at here.
On the one hand teachers and schools are beyond naive when it comes to internet services and data privacy. Every year it's a new 'teacher favourite app of the day' service that my child gets signed into. My child is either automatically registered without my/her permission, or pressured by the teacher to become 'part of the group' if she refuses. These services require everything you need to know about a person. Name, age, birthdate, address, cellphone number (obviously). It's a mass handover of personal information. All because the service is "free" and it will make the teacher's life "so much more convenient". Nearly all these services are operated from out of country. If there's a more obvious example of mass surveillance, I don't know what that is. Teachers/schools don't need to know where my child is and what they're doing outside of school hours and property. Third parties don't need to have my child's personal information handed to them on a platter. So fuck off and die teachers for subscribing to these services.
On the other hand, charging per-message fees to pay for spam protection is equally shitty.
If Android and IOS could just put down the hand grenades for one moment and agree on a common texting over internet protocol, then we wouldn't have to rely on SMS texting in the first place.
The reason is reach.
SMS reaches 7 billion people.
Any app can only reach maximum 1-2% of that user base.
aaaaaaa
Remind sends emails to every teacher they can to try to get them to use their "free" service.
Once enough teachers in a district start using it, Remind contacts the school district to inform them that they are breaking the law and the paid version that archives the communications can be bought for tens of thousands of $$ a year.
This company has a business model based on borderline extortion. Hope they go out of business
at least they are not billing the end user for incoming txts.
Verizon and others need to stop trying to pretend that text messages cost them huge amounts of money. The maximum data size of a text message is 1120 bits! That's barely over 1Kbit (and that's bits not bytes!)
"Remind" could easily spin up it's own "Reminders" app, get students/parents to install it on their phones, and have it periodically check for notifications like any other messaging app on the planet over the phone's data connection (and if they roll their own, then they can store/archive the messages sent as per any government regulation requirements). And doing so would allow them to appropriately whip the finger and Verizon and any other service provider that decides it wants to charge for text messages. The only problem with this approach is that it's yet another app that has to remain resident in your's/your kid's smartphone memory eating up battery life.
Bulk SMS company's should pay.. they are the ones using it the most.
"Remind" could easily spin up it's own "Reminders" app, get students/parents to install it on their phones, and have it periodically check for notifications like any other messaging app on the planet over the phone's data connection
They already have an app and it's pretty good. We use it for the high school team I coach and it works well. But expecting everyone to install an app and to check it religiously is unrealistic. Furthermore a surprising number of people don't have smartphones either by choice or by fiscal necessity. I have several parents who either have older flip phones (by choice) or who cannot afford smartphones. If you think "just install the app" is a good solution you haven't dealt with parents and you REALLY haven't dealt with students. Text messaging is FAR more universal and makes it easier to reach everyone. It also works with technology that you cannot install the app on. At schools you have to meet people where they are, not where you think they should be.
Basically Verizon is being lazy in their attempts to deal with text spammers. They are making simple and overly broad policies rather that doing the hard work of actually working to figure out who is a problem and who isn't.
... and the short of it is that Verizon wants more money.
yvw
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Remind sends emails to every teacher they can to try to get them to use their "free" service.
Not really true and even if it were there is nothing unethical about trying to reach a target audience.
Once enough teachers in a district start using it, Remind contacts the school district to inform them that they are breaking the law and the paid version that archives the communications can be bought for tens of thousands of $$ a year.
That is not their business model.
This company has a business model based on borderline extortion. Hope they go out of business
This is quite simply a lie. I use their app and so does our school district. They don't extort anyone.
I don't understand why Remind wants to use SMS so badly? Install an app and communicate through that. This isn't a problem.
Because you can reach more people with SMS than any app. Not everyone has the latest smartphones. I have quite a few parents on teams I coach that still use flip phones. And even those who do don't really want to be checking unnecessary apps. Text messaging is close to universal so why not use it? Also not everyone has access to data connections at all times and SMS can reach more places more of the time.
Sorry, I don't need a bunch of BS being sent to my cell phone. If I'm in school, tell me in person. If it's after hours, leave me the hell alone.
You obviously don't have children. It's not "a bunch of BS" and a lot of information needs to reach parents and students outside of school hours. I coach a sports team at a high school. We need to be able to reach parents and students and services like Remind (which we use) help a LOT with this. I am not a teacher and I have a real job. We send out information that everyone on the team needs to know in a timely and cost effective manner. Expecting schools to waste money chasing you down in person only during school hours and only when you happen to be on campus (rare for parents) is absurd.
Except that Remind actually IS NOT spamming. I'm not sure how often this is used to communicate directly with students in upper grades or college.
My school district uses it and it's hugely helpful. The team I coach uses it to great effect. We send out a few messages a week with information parents and students need to know. It results in a few messages a week mostly. Nothing unreasonable and it's entirely voluntary. But the utility means most parents sign up since they tend to like to know what's going on and I'm not about to call them one by one to explain everything.
Hey illiterate idiot, learn to read. WhatsApp has an abusive TOS and requires high speed internet. WhatsApp is not SMS.
Expecting students to hand over their personal information and cell phone number to a third party is also unrealistic.
Remind gets basically no personal information and cell phone numbers aren't private. Furthermore using it is 100% voluntary. The school can't make them use it if they don't want to. Some of the parents and kids I deal with don't have phones so they can't use it even if they want to.
You really haven't dealt with the reality of just how you've sold your students privacy down the river.
Ha! Are we talking about the same people who spend their entire lives on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat? Spare me your indignation. Remind is hardly going to make a dent in their loss of privacy which they don't value anyway.
You have no control over how "Remind" uses this data, or how the data will be sold over and over long after your high school team has moved on.
If Remind can find a way to monetize my team's announcements 5 years from now then $diety bless them.
When students sell their privacy to organizations like Facebook, it's their choice to do so or not.
It's no different with Remind. Using it is voluntary. The school can ask but they cannot force anyone to use it.
I went through school without ever receiving a texto, so what is so critical about it? Leave those kids alone! Do not get them used to be connected 24/7, they will be easier to force to do the same thing at work later.
Verizon and others need to stop trying to pretend that text messages cost them huge amounts of money.
Verizon isn't acting like texts cost them huge amounts of money - they are collecting money for anti-spam efforts, you know - AI-based tools, manual review of messages, etc.
Remind, through Twillo, already pays a per-message fee to Verizon (and every other carrier), this is separate from that expense.
Ken
Bulk SMS company's should pay.. they are the ones using it the most.
They are the only ones facing this fee. Remind uses Twillo, Twillo pumps 4.5 Billon text messages into Verizon, and it pays a fee for each message it sends. Remind uses Twillo to send out it's text messages, all 1.6 billion of them a year. Twillo represents a constant half-million texts/hour, Remind represents 183K of those messages each hour. Twillo, and it's major client Remind, ARE the heavy users of the system.
Ken
Remind service was creating for schools and teachers to communicate with their students. It operates using an app, emails, and text messages. By suggesting something like WhatsApp anything else which is a private messaging service, shows that you really don't know much about the subject matter.
One of the options that the service has, he said teachers may send messages to the classes and students from a text message as well, students and parents may receive their notifications as text messages. The article is specifically about horizon views this as spam and has decided that all messages over text from this service will be registered as spam, not legitimate SMS messages. It is wrong to Verizon to take this position, as any notification service which is legitimate may be easily marked as spam by Verizon in order for them to capitalize. Ajit Pai things you can really corrupt person he is, is surely behind this.
It's amazing how parents knew anything that was going on in the school before computers and cell phones were introduces. It's almost as if they had to talk to their child or something. Maybe even the teacher once and a while. Thank goodness technology has put an end to that!
From twilioâ(TM)s pricing page (https://www.twilio.com/sms/pricing/us) Verizon actually seems to impose a fee that is equal or less than the other major US carriers...
How was it free? Remind is spending money, and presumably not sending ads to students along with the teacher's messages. How were they making money?