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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.
Didn't see the sarcasm tag so I'm assuming that's serious. Teachers cannot use private messaging services like WhatsApp, at least in the US. All communication with students has to be archived as it should be accessible to parents via the Freedom of Information App. It also protects teachers from unfounded accusations by students.
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.
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.
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.
Uh, some of us sign up for these things because it's hard to keep track of all your kids' various practices, homework assignments, and other school stuff. I don't have Verizon so this doesn't affect me, but if I did I'd be installing the app so that I continue to receive the messages.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
As a professor at a left-coast US university: holy shit, I would never give students my cell phone number, and I don't want theirs. Students are creepy and will take any opportunity to do all sorts of creepy things. Little future axe-murderers of America will sit through all your office hours or follow you around campus because they have no friends and because you look like the father figure they never had. The university provides me with an e-mail address for sending students reminders about things, and that suffices. I can turn over e-mails to the IT staff if a student starts getting creepy. My cell phone number, however, will never meet my students' cell phone numbers.
... because students should be compelled to agree with another abusive TOS
The messages are also available on the school website. The texts are for convenience, but the information can be either pushed or pulled.
... and be forced to have high speed Internet access at home?
Receiving a text does not require "high speed".
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 experience is with it used in elementary school for the teachers to send information to the parents. It also allows parents to respond back to the group, and one parent to respond to any other parent in the class. And it does this without anyone having to share their email address or phone number with each other. The parents voluntarily sign up for the list, so it's not spam even if you don't like the messages being sent.
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).
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
All communication with students has to be archived as it should be accessible to parents via the Freedom of Information App.
Wait, what?
You can't be talking about the Freedom Of Information Act, because that only covers making federal records available. It doesn't actually mandate keeping any records, though - that's covered by other acts like the Presidential Records Act which has been in the news lately.
For educational records, there is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, but that has a similar effect in that it allows for records to be reviewed and corrected, but it doesn't appear (in my quick reading) to actually require schools to make new records.
It also protects teachers from unfounded accusations by students.
That seems more like the actual reason.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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.
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.
True enough, giving kids an expensive smart phone they can easily smash isn't the best idea in the world, or even financially viable for many people.
The app shouldn't require you to manually launch it to check for messages, it should be able to monitor and display notifications as needed. But as you said, not everyone has a smart phone.
Verizon's actions in this regard are why we can't just leave services up to the free market with no regulation. This is what happens when we let industry lobbyists bribe the heck out of politicians and get their own people appointed to seats in the FCC and elsewhere.