Imagine this: You're at work one day and you see colleagues gathered around a monitor, watching breaking news. The day’s storm has required the local school to close early and you are seeing live news footage of parents picking up their kids. But you’re still at the office because you didn’t get the notification. You were in meetings all day and not able to check your email or voicemail. You’re frustrated because the school didn’t send you a text message which you could have looked at while you were in your meetings. Later you learn the school actually had sent you a text message with instructions about an early pickup -- on the same platform it uses for other important parent notifications -- but you didn’t get the message this time. Why not?
You might be surprised to learn that you didn’t receive this critical message because your wireless carrier blocked it without informing you and without asking for your permission. It unilaterally denied you this vital message without regard to who sent it, the message’s content, or even that you specifically chose to get it. What will the next message be that you don’t get?
This scenario is real and prevents consumers from receiving tens of millions of messages every year. Importantly, it previews a world without net neutrality. Because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just rolled back net neutrality protections, the status quo with text messaging - where carriers decide unilaterally what organizations are allowed to text with you - could spread to everything you do on the Internet. You might not have access to some websites due to indiscriminate blocking by your internet provider, and some other websites might work so slowly that they don’t function correctly or allow you to view videos or other content.
Text messages were not protected by net neutrality rules that protected voice and broadband communications. Because of this, wireless carriers have been free to block messages that consumers have actively opted in to receive, and expect to receive, from schools, non-profit organizations, government organizations, and businesses -- without explanation.
Wireless carriers say message blocking protects consumers by preventing spam and fraud. That’s an important issue to tackle, but the carriers are not providing any transparency into how they decide which messages to block and they are not alerting the senders (or receivers) that those messages were blocked. The industry needs to work together to address spam, but do so without blocking legitimate messages that consumers have opted in to receive.
While they say eliminating spam is their objective, wireless carriers are offering senders an option that costs 500x more to guarantee delivery or offering a competing service. This isn’t just about protecting consumers, this is anti-competitive behavior.
Innovative services that enable schools to communicate with parents and students via text message - are already impacted, and parents could be denied critical messages without any explanation or notification from their wireless carrier.
Non-profit organizations like CareMessage, whose partner clinics serve more than one million low-income Americans, note that when their appointment reminders get blocked by wireless carriers, without permission or notification, underserved patients could miss important reminders about taking their medication, or even go without medical care.
When important messages like these get blocked, wireless carriers simply point to their right to control the traffic on their network. But this blocking would never be tolerated under the rules that protected voice calls and broadband access.
Twilio estimates that wireless carriers block more than 100 million text messages that consumers opt-in to receiving each year. In light of the recent rollback of net neutrality protections, odds are that this pattern of having your communication arbitrarily blocked by your wireless carriers will only accelerate.
That’s because the same wireless carriers that are blocking and throttling consumers’ important text messages also happen to be internet service providers. Some of these companies insist that they will continue to operate the way they have when net neutrality protections were in place. However, without rules that protect consumers from arbitrary blocking, filtering, or paid prioritization, there’s no doubt these same providers will take a similar approach to broadband services as they have with text messaging.
The reason this offends us is that wireless carriers have a monopoly status over our communications. For any individual customer, a phone carrier has a monopoly over access to their device. Without neutrality regulation, carriers wield unilateral power over who can communicate with you. That's why our society has always ensured that power couldn't be used in unfair ways.
It's tempting to say that carriers are operating a business and should be free to set prices and discriminate services they offer as part of their product. Yet consumer access to Internet services is a duopoly, or monopoly, in many places. This is not a coincidence. In decades past, municipalities granted monopolies to phone companies, and later cable companies, to run wires through their towns. In exchange for those monopolies, municipalities asked for fair access to those wires. The Telecommunications Act of 1934 established "common carriage" to ensure that those monopolies - free from competition - couldn't exercise monopolistic tendencies they'd been granted. Again in the 1970s and 1980s, when cable television sprung up, municipalities asked for fair access in exchange for a monopoly right to run wires through our cities - at the time, that fairness was in the form of public access television.
Today, however, the Internet has far exceeded in importance the original intention of those writs. Not only is the Internet a lifeline of communications - for both television and phone calls - it's a lifeline of innovation and of our economy.
These unfair behaviors don’t just hurt the organizations sending the messages, they impact you. You may have to pay more to get these critical messages. Or you may be left wondering if you are getting these critical messages at all.
Fundamentally, whether you’re on the internet, making a phone call or sending and receiving messages, your communication should simply go through, free of interference from your service provider.
Your Voice Matters. Be Heard.
So what can you do? While the current FCC is rolling back the existing regulations that protect consumers’ access to a free and open internet, Congress can and should take action. Every citizen and taxpayer needs to tell their congressional representative that a future without net neutrality protections is unacceptable and they should act now to preserve open and accessible communications.
To make sure your voice is heard, text “Resist” to 50409 or call 1-844-USA-0234 or click here and you’ll be connected to the representatives for your area.
A world without net neutrality is here today but doesn’t have to persist tomorrow.
