NENA Concerned About Public Safety Implications of Reclassifying Message Services

NENA said it’s not staking out a position on how short message service texting should be regulated, but the FCC should recognize possible consequences of reclassification.

If the FCC grants Twilio’s petition "we believe it should carefully consider the impact such a decision could have on access to crucial communications,” such as text to 911, NENA said. Text to 911 should be universally available, the public safety group said in reply comments. “We are therefore sensitive to the concerns expressed by CTIA and others that a Title II classification could drive consumers away from the SMS platform.” NENA is headed by Brian Fontes, a top lieutenant to FCC chairman Tom Wheeler when Wheeler was president of CTIA.

Twilio, which offers its own version of SMS and multiple message service texting to its business clients, said in its Aug. 28 petition more than 2 trillion text messages were sent in just 2014. “Well beyond teenagers texting one another, messaging has become an essential form of communication among all sorts of parties, consumers and businesses alike,” Twilio said. But telecom companies treat text messages as if they were in a "regulatory no man’s land.”

Changing how text messaging is classified “would severely hamper the ability of wireless carriers to restrict unwanted spam messages to consumers,” said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste. While companies like Twilio offer a legitimate service, “the vast majority of spam traffic involves scams and other fraudulent activity,” Schatz wrote.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said the regulatory change could mean more unwanted text messages to consumers and increased fraud and unwanted charges on phone bills, plus slower performance on the consumer's mobile device. Consumers increasingly use text messages to “communicate timely or important messages to friends, family members, co-workers and others they know and trust,” Cooper said in comments. He urged the commission to “closely examine the current environment regarding text messaging, the tools and filters currently being used by carriers in an attempt to reduce text messaging spam, and the potential impact that any policy changes being advocated in the petition would have on a carrier's ability to shield its customers from text message spam.”

CTIA also raised concerns about unwanted messages, saying changing the status of text messages could lead to an “explosion” in spam. The change would also undermine the messaging marketplace, the wireless association said. “Beyond issues of unwanted or unlawful messages, neither Twilio nor commenters in favor of Title II even acknowledge the many additional costs and uncertainties that would flow from classifying messaging as a Title II service,” CTIA said. “Classification of messaging as a telecommunications service would impose on such offerings dozens of statutory provisions and hundreds of codified rules, putting mobile messaging at a clear disadvantage vis-à-vis other similar services, such as [over-the-top] messaging and email.”

Granting Twilio’s request would be a mistake, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “A change in the regulatory classification, requiring carriers to hold themselves out to all incoming messaging traffic, would undermine ongoing competition between messaging platforms with unpredictable consequences,” ITIF said. “The information service status of mobile messaging has allowed carriers to create a valuable service for consumers, and the Commission should maintain this environment.”

“Messaging exists as we know it today in part because of the proactive efforts the industry has taken to ensure that the platform remains free from spam and harmful, unwanted communications such as phishing attempts or those that contain malware,” Mobile Future said.