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Dec. 12, 2007

Today, several consumer and public interest groups have jointly filed a petition with the FCC asking the commission to stop wireless carriers from blocking text messages from political groups and specific advertisers.

Filed December 12 by Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Free Press, Mobile Commons and a few others, the petition to the FCC comes after Verizon Wireless blocked text messages from a reproductive rights organization three months ago.

For its part, when the story was reported, Verizon reversed its decision to block the messages.

The petition said "mobile carriers currently can and do arbitrarily decide what customers to serve and which speech to allow on text messages, refusing to serve those that they find controversial or that compete with the mobile carriers' services."

It also stated "this type of discrimination would be unthinkable and illegal in the world of voice communications, and it should be so in the world of text messaging as well."

Also supporting the petition, VoIP (Voice over IP) provider Rebtel added that carriers have blocked messages from the company advertising its lower cost VoIP services.

Hjalmar Winbladh, Rebtel CEO added "from the very start, we've said that rejecting our short code campaign was an anticompetitive abuse of power."

While Verizon Wireless said its blocking of Naral's text messaging campaign was a mistake, it said that wireless carriers should not have to carry advertising from competitors.

Wireless carriers and other vendors also are concerned that if the FCC grants the petition, consumers could be flooded with text spam.

Verizon has said that it blocks between 100 and 200 million unwanted text messages a month, with many that contain pornography.

But the various consumer groups filing the petition argue that carriers should not be allowed to discriminate who is allowed to send "lawful" messages, saying that allowing carriers to decide which messages are sent hinders free speech, is anticompetitive and can even hamper innovation.

Wireless carriers are currently not allowed to censor voice calls or individual emails, but there are no rules on the censoring of text messages.

"We need to have the FCC set the rules for the entire industry, and for a generation of people that depend a lot on text messaging. There is no place for discrimination in texting," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.

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Source: Wireless Week