Spotify is a terrible example. People listen to one song at a time, and
choose the songs they listen to.
Unwanted A2P SMS is more akin to unwanted commercial mail.
The receiver is required to put in effort and a few brain cycles to handle
the unwanted material, making a decision to dispose of it and placing the
mail in the trash/recycling.
The trash company has to pay to dispose of it, and the receiver has to pay
the trash company. The cost of the commercial mail is borne by the
receiver.
The A2P fees are a tax as a dis-incentive to the behavior, as well as the
increased costs by carriers of enforcing acceptable behavior and stopping
it outside of the rules.
I can see the argument that there is now an additional fee for businesses
to reach their customers. Yep. Mostly because enough bad actors took
advantage of the lack of regulation.
The market will find new and different ways that are less expensive to
reach their customers as a result.
Beckman
On Fri, 5 Mar 2021, Kent Adams wrote:
The views being espoused by many here seem to be myopic and rely on the
assumed existence some sort of corporate conscience which will be regulated
by free market principles. My position on these surcharges is that the
intentions behind them are good, and their current advertised use comes
from a place of positive motivation to serve the customers of AT&T and
Verizon. However, the implementation leads us to a place we have seen many
times, a place where free market principles are stifled and a corporate
oligarchy chooses winners and losers in moral or ethical arguments rather
than being impartial arbiters seeking to eliminate some common enemy of the
people. Allow me to posit some hypotheticals which are possible under the
current implementation before you pass judgement against naysayers of the
aims of this surcharge scheme.
Imagine a service such as Spotify where a subscriber base pays a monthly
fee for access to media content which is varied. The producers of this
content come straight to Spotify and in-turn their content is made
available to the Spotify base. Spotify's subscribers, in this scenario, get
some content they desire, but some content they don't. So they complain
about the content they don't want forced into their ears, and Spotify
decides rather than blocking this content completely, they shall force
providers of that content to pay a surcharge to continue forced delivery of
their content to it's subscriber base. The customers are initially pleased
with the drop in unwanted content, but some providers choose to pay up and
continue to deliver the content. Over time, Spotify, in analyzing the
content that is paying the surcharge realizes there is a genuine business
opportunity. They acquire one of the providers of this content category,
exempt that provider's content from the surcharge, and thus make the
playing field unlevel in a way that benefits themselves. Alongside this,
they also find content which supports ideals important to it's corporate
aims and exempt that content from surcharges, but increase the surcharge on
content which is contrary to their corporate ideals, and no consideration
is provided in this matter concerning the ideals of their subscriber base.
Are you still in support of Spotify's surcharge scheme?
Under my hypothetical what starts out as a win for the business and a win
for the subscribers becomes something that would strike many as unethical
and counter to free market principles and principles of free speech. For an
example of how a telecom company can utilize its influence and internal
data over it's base and become at odds with free market principles I assert
that we need look no further than the events leading to CPNI. For an
example of how a company can move its content management in a way that is
at odds with the principles of free speech I assert that we need look no
further than the current polarization of social media platforms. The lack
of transparency around these surcharges, particularly who is subject to
them and why, and the lack of an appeal process which is open, makes
attempts at being impartial, and has a specific set of guidelines for the
types of content that are being targeted, and the assurance that
subsidiaries and strategic partners will not be given favorable status
gives me great pause over whether the actions under discussion in this
thread are a net positive or are the start of something that will be a net
negative. For these reasons, I support the skepticism and would encourage
this group not to wound our own at the expense of defending a self-serving
action of large cellular network providers.
Thanks,
Kent
On Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 11:40 PM Peter Beckman <beck...@angryox.com> wrote:
On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Fred Posner wrote:
On 3/4/21 12:52 PM, Oren Yehezkely wrote:
Overall it is a move by a giant to hurt small carriers and customers of
other companies by reducing functionality and raising their cost of
doing business.
Nothing I see impacts sms for individiual <-> individual or SMB <->
individual at low volume. In fact, it's specifically stated those do not
need to register.
A2P: Application-to-Person. Business to Individual.
P2P: Person-to-Person. Conversational SMS between two Individuals.
A2P: "50% Off at The Cloud Store This weekend" sent to 100,000 people
P2P: "Nah, I'm gonna stay home and watch The Expanse tonight" sent from
one person to one very special person
If you have a good relationship with your vendor(s), and you follow and
enforce CTIA Guidelines on acceptable volumes of P2P traffic, you can get
your traffic treated as P2P and avoid A2P tarriffs.
If you're sending business stuff, even 10-20 of the same or very similar
message to multiple people, it's A2P, and you'll pay the fee or lose your
P2P designation.
P2P isn't going away, you just have to earn it by keeping watch over your
SMS traffic.
Is it a significant change from "send anything you want to anyone without
consequence or cost?" Sure... though Verizon did this LAST YEAR, so I'm
not sure why AT&T doing it now is a sky-is-falling event. T-Mobile WILL
do
it too, so plan now.
If your business model breaks because of the tarriffs for A2P SMS
traffic,
bummer for you. Time to "pivot" or go bankrupt.
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http://www.angryox.com/
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Kent Adams
Vice President of NextGen Network Operations and Development
BCM One NextGen Communications Group
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