Who owns your telephone number? According to Section 251(b) of the Communications Act of 1934, you own your number and can move it to the carrier of your choice. But who owns your texting phone number? It’s the same number, just used for a different purpose. The law says nothing about texting so the major wireless carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon) are claiming that number is theirs, not yours, even if you are the one paying a little extra for unlimited texting. And the way they see it, unlimited is clearly limited, with carriers and texting services not offered by the Big Four expected soon to pay cash to reach you.
Those who’ll pay to text you include mobile carriers not in the Big Four led by the largest independent, US Cellular, as well as so-called over-the-top texting service providers that presently offer free texting services. These companies include pinger.com, textplus.com, textnow.com, textme.com, and heywire.com. Service continues for now but the incumbents are threatening to shut it down any day. T-Mobile started trying to impose fees several weeks ago and Sprint, I’m told, will start trying to charge next week.
Verizon shut off texting access to their network for two weeks starting April 3 as a shot across the bow of the over-the-top (OTT) carriers. Texting suddenly stopped working for OTT users, supposedly to limit spam texts. It quickly became documented that 98 percent of SMS SPAM was coming from ATT and T-Mobile SIM card fraud, which was not affected by the OTT cut-off, so the Verizon switch was turned back on, though OTT carriers were now on warning.
This is tied, by the way, to the emergence of a new business — 800 texting. Want to report a problem to your cable company or check your bank balance? Send them a text. This was supposed to become a big business but now may not even start because the providers who make it possible are all OTT. The incumbent carriers don’t enable 800 texting because they don’t have the technology. This is their way of getting a piece of this new business.
For that matter, the carriers also didn’t have the ability to do billing for this type of service so they asked the two large US SMS aggregators (SAP & Syniverse) to track it on their behalf, which they have reportedly done. Now it’s just a matter of pulling the trigger.
Texting used to mean big bucks to mobile carriers back when it was charged a la carte and the fathers of teenager girls were getting bills for hundreds — sometimes thousands — of dollars per month. Unlimited texting and family plans have changed that for most of us. But the carriers miss that income and this gambit for control of our texting number may be an attempt to regain some of that old revenue, and some of the influence that has shifted in the past few years to non-SMS messaging apps such as Snapchat (raising money at huge reported valuations), Viber, acquired earlier this year for $900 million by Rakuten, and Whatsapp, acquired for $19 billion by Facebook. To the extent these services tie into SMS networks, they may feel some of the carrier’s controlling effect.
Apple can do texting with its iMessage, but that’s Apple and is dependent on its ownership of the operating system and the great deal it cut with carriers back in 2007. Google and Android don’t have a deal like Apple’s. So iOS comes out of this looking good.
The point of pain here is interoperability — where OTT networks try to interface with legacy text networks which aren’t OTT. The FCC, which nominally regulates mobile phones, is nowhere to be found in this story because texting is considered neither voice nor data service under the Communications Act. Texting is signaling, which used to mean just setting-up and disconnecting calls but could include a short message. Unregulated, the carriers can charge what they like, which looks to be 2-3 cents per text. But to add another first, the big carriers are aiming to charge for both sending and receiving. Remember that even under the old regulated phone system it didn’t cost money to receive a call. So a transaction with your cable company involving a text and a response will incur a total of four charges — two transmissions and two receptions costing someone up to 12 cents.
This is just plain-text we are talking about. Picture texting is another service, also unregulated by the FCC, and subject to its own set of carrier negotiations. If plain-text costs 3-12 cents, picture texting will cost more. In picture texting, too, Apple’s iMessage has an advantage.
OTT texting last year amounted to just under 100 billion messages so the big carriers are looking for up to $10 billion in new revenue (on top of $21 billion in existing text revenue). Internet startups will die or be sold if these changes go through and presumably the carriers will pick up those businesses. This does not bode well for innovation, though it bolsters somewhat text and chat services like SnapChat that don’t even attempt to deliver through the mobile phone’s native texting.
It is unclear how this story will play out. The FCC can do nothing unless someone complains and until you read this column nobody even knew to complain. So decide how you feel about it.
I believe this is the first message Bob posted to Forbes.com. At least it seems very familiar. I don’t text myself, but maybe those who do text may want to register their complaints.
Google DOES have a messaging service comparable to iMessage – Hangouts. However, it’s a moot point, since both services use data connections, not SMS messages.
Both Hangouts and iMessage can switch between using data and sending SMS. Not sure about iMessge, but SMS messages have to come from the user’s phone (but not a tablet or computer) by integrating with the phone’s OS.. In fact Android has a lot of apps that can do this. Verizon has an app that can send text messages from either your phone or computer. I guess that’s the advantage of owning the network.
Hopefully this service won’t be interfered with since the messages are coming from the customers. The carriers might not even know what app the SMS messages originate from anyway.
Nobody said it didn’t. The point made in the article is that Google doesn’t have a deal with carriers to support it.
Use Skype. Messaging in the current versions works flawlessly, and it has some other benefits including no cost for international, the ability to send files, and the vastly improved ability to send messages while the recipient is offline. I use it to communicate every day with a good friend 7 time zones away, who could not afford to keep in touch at the international rate charged by his carrier. We have very different schedules and a number of different devices, and Skype works great in every circumstance we’ve tried it in.
You haven’t tried it on Linux then, where it is clearly the unfavoured step-child of the Microsoft Skype acquisition. It’s the single worst app I know of for doing it’s darndest to affect system stability by sucking up masses of CPU, even when not active or only sending IM text, locking up, crashing or refusing to install at all. Also, regardless of issues on Linux, Skype is clunky and totally incompatible with all the other IM protocols.
Re: “totally incompatible with all the other IM protocols”. Isn’t that the problem with IM in general? You need to install a compatible client and know your recipient’s IM client and address before you can send a message. Text messaging “just works” as long as you’re sending to a cell phone. And it’s even unlimited on most cell phone plans, including prepaid. Admittedly, there is one cost issue: many people may still be using “legacy” cell phone voice plans from the 90s, and still being charged 20¢ to receive a text.
12c per text? That sounds like a bargain. Now we see that in fact you are talking about two people splitting the cost, and it is for 2 messages, not one. So the real cost is 6c per text and response, which may or may not exist.
I am currently paying 20c per text from a big carrier.
Same here–and that’s 20 cents to send OR receive!
$0.12 is ON TOP OF any additional charges.
Now I’m even more confused.
So your 12 c should have been 92c?
Pay As You Go, or similar has always charged a premium for texting and the only way to get customers into a two-year contract was to offer better minute and text deals. So though I can understand why carriers are looking to generate more income by upping prices surely that would mean less texts per contract and therefore put customers off ?
Contracts can also let you call family members on the same telco for free – another bonus. Why wreck customer loyalty?
In the UK I don’t think I’ve ever texted someone on a minor player in the telco game so if the big-guys have the market sewn-up, that’s not very nice, but I haven’t yet been affected or charged, as yet.
I find it hard to see where the telcos involved in Bob’s article are going to go with this…
If a music vendor like Apple charged the same rate per bit as a text message vendor, a song would cost around $5,486 to transmit, yet Apple manages to sell and deliver songs, and make a profit at $1.29 per song:
http://cis471.blogspot.com/2008/09/senator-kohl-questions-cellular.html
The first non-carrier texting was Blackberry BBM. And before that, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, Yahoo, etc. all had push messaging support on the Blackberry. (Ironically, all BlackBerry push messages arrive via the SMS channel. If it’s a regular text message, the carrier charges you 20 cents; if it’s a push notification text message, it’s free)
That spawned platform independent services like Kik and WhatsApp. Then Apple’s iMessage. Now there’s Skype, Facebook, and Google+ messaging.
I’ve had a smartphone since late 2005 and never used SMS if it could be avoided. I went from Google Talk to BBM to iMessage. I’ve only ever considered SMS to be a bizarre, obsolete way to talk to people on antique phones.
SMS a is obviously a huge deal for the carriers, but I’ve never understood why people use it. Not in 2005 and not in 2014.
Exactly. I am astonished at the number of fully-functional adults who send me SMS text messages, usually having to do with some school activity for the kids.
I am not a 14-year-old girl, why are you sending me a SMS?
People use SMS because it is the most common protocol, regardless of whether you are using Apple, Android, Blackberry, or whatever IM application (and there are many different protocols). If you have a cell phone, it supports SMS. The IM applications, while generally superior, are too proprietary, for the most part, and generally do not interact well. Try using Hangouts to send a message to iMessage without falling back to SMS…you can’t do it 🙂
@Ronc, I agree with what you say, but it should be noted that Google’s Hangouts use an open protocol, so anybody can write a client that is completely compatible with it (and many small players have done so – they are all compatible with each other.)
The lack of interoperability is entirely the fault of Microsoft (Skype) and Apple (Messenger.) who have deliberately decided not to implement compatibility with open protocols such as this, and go out of their way to prevent anyone else creating bridges which would enable it.
You are 100% correct. Text messages drive me nuts and unless it’s from my daughter I refuse to answer them. We all have more voice call credit than we use in a month so I tell people to CALL……. Only people I want to talk to have my mobile number anyway.
Same here. And after getting a handful of spam texts, I called my carrier and got texting turned off entirely. Who needs that crap. Call.
If you’re on call, don’t expect your company to try to send texts to you via a proprietary format. You’ll get them via SMS, because they want the texts to reach you, system (and app) agnostic.
Ah, to talk to the majority of the users who do NOT have Apple phones?
[…] By Robert X. Cringely […]
Perhaps Bob could add these email addresses (from the FCC website at https://www.fcc.gov/contact-us) to his post to facilitate comments?
To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail
Chairman Tom Wheeler: Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov
Commissioner Mignon Clyburn: Mignon.Clyburn@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: Jessica.Rosenworcel@fcc.gov
Commissioner Ajit Pai: Ajit.Pai@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael O’Rielly: Mike.O’Rielly@fcc.gov
This only matters to those on dumb “feature” phones, and most of those folks probably don’t text. SMS is very efficient for the carrier networks, but if it gets too expensive there are plenty of other choices for smart phones.
3rd party companies who use SMS to send notifications (school snow days, etc), will simply migrate to one or more messaging apps and away from SMS ( or email->SMS gateways, as any use now).
Sorry Bob, but this issue is a non-starter.
“very efficient” isn’t quite the word for it. According to what I heard long ago, there are 140 spare bytes in the housekeeping frames – the chatter between your cellphone and the tower. That chatter is happening the whole time your phone is in range of a tower, so that the phone knows where its outgoing voice/data goes to, and the phone system knows where your phone is, for its incoming voice/data. The whole “texting” thing was just using those otherwise-unused 140 bytes. The bytes are flying through the air whether being used for texting or not. Since it’s all packets, I have a feeling that those 140 bytes are also flying through the backhaul network, as well. (Though I may be wrong on that one, I’ll admit.)
The net – texting is practically free to the phone carriers, in terms of cost. Those 140 bytes are traveling across their network whether you use them or not. Texting is gravy, pure profit.
Bob,
I don’t have a lot of context for this article, any chance you could do a follow up or post some links? (I’ve never heard of OTT before this – among other things.)
1) Does this mean that the carriers believe they can charge any entity that seeks to send their customer a SMS or MMS?
2) If so, does that mean they can charge small virtual cell companies (like the multitude that run on Sprint)? They’d never do it to the big four obviously due to the competitive disadvantage they’d receive in the public relations market. /Thought that never seems to stop them at other times, so who knows?
3) How do they justify the distinction between phone calls to a specific phone number and other services to that number? At least on the grounds that they “own it.” I could see a case being made for charging for non-voice communication in practice, but claiming ownership over a phone number that is already owned seems legally odd.
In general, I’m left with lots of questions and confusion on the actual impact on personal cell use, corporate cell accounts, and the different types of services (emergency notification systems, free texting, etc…).
Thanks.
Such mishugas over nothing. I don’t text and don’t look forward to texting any time soon. Telephone and email are more than enough. Of course, it would be nice if the friggin’ cell phones would sound half as good as the old landlines used to.
I used to agree with that, and still do, when it comes to texting on a phone with only a number pad. But you will start to appreciate and prefer texting when people you know start texting you. Texting eliminates the disturbance and urgency of a ringing phone, as does voicemail, but unlike voicemail, you don’t have to “check it” and then dial a number if you decide to respond. Also, as the initiator, you don’t have to listen to the other end ringing, waiting for either the person or their voicemail to pickup.
I may be the odd man out, but I use texting a lot. I even text the kids upstairs to come down for dinner. On my plan I have unlimited texting in North America.
I’d rather text than make a cellphone call and I wish everyone else on my crowded rush-hour bus felt the same way. If every kid on the bus would just SHUT UP I’d pay their text charges myself.
“Text Messaging is the closest thing to pure profit ever invented” — Sir Chris Gent (Founder of ‘Vodafone’ )
Perhaps as a percentage of cost, but in terms of dollars, it has to be the income tax followed by the Apple tax.
[…] I, Cringely Mobile Carriers Are Trying To Control Your Texting – I, Cringely […]
[…] I, Cringely Mobile Carriers Are Trying To Control Your Texting – I, Cringely […]
As others have noted, everyone already knows texting costs carriers effectively zero.
So offering unlimited texting for $10/month is still a money-maker.
Adding absurd charges to text messages only means a more rapid adoption of alternative messaging apps like iMessage or Hangouts – and you can be sure those developers would find a way around carrier surcharges.
Keep in mind the cell phone companies are regulated, to some extent. Currently they work together to deliver texts across company boundaries, and store them if the recipient is out of range. If the government told them to lower the price or get out of the text business, they could choose to eliminate the service. Any loss in profit would be recovered through charges for things like data, voice, email, and “fees for government meddling”.