CTIA punches back against Twilio in Title II tussle over the fate of SMS in net neutrality

CTIA threw another counter-punch in its fight against efforts to impose common carrier regulations on mobile messaging services. The trade group responded to a request from the mobile messaging provider Twilio to make SMS services subject to Title II regulations. Such a move "would open the floodgates to unwanted and unlawful mass messages," CTIA claimed in a filing with the FCC this week.

The group also claimed that because text messaging involves the storing, retrieval and transformation of information, it is an information service rather than a telecommunications service. Therefore, according to the filing, "there is no legal basis whatsoever for imposing a Title II framework."

Verizon (NYSE: VZ), AT&T (NYSE: T) and CTIA each made similar arguments in separate FCC filings last month.

Those moves are in response to Twilio's August claim that carriers had blocked its business customers' messages. Twilio's service enables those businesses to send and receive texts using the same phone number they use to field voice calls from consumers. Twilio, which uses Amazon Web Services to send SMS missives to phones, said the carriers had begun to rout its messages through a third-party messaging aggregator who demanded Twilio sign a contract to get those communications through. The carriers made that move, Twilio implied, because the messaging aggregator presumably shared those revenues with carriers.

The consumer-advocacy groups Common Cause, Free Press and Public Knowledge backed Twilio's position in an FCC filing of their own last month.

The FCC in February approved net neutrality rules for wireless carriers, essentially forbidding them to block messages sent over the web. But whether text messages can be blocked under net neutrality rules is still undetermined.

"To be clear, the wireless industry is committed to enhancing messaging offerings," according to this week's filing from the CTIA, which noted it is overseeing "an ecosystem-wide, multistakeholder process designed to enable hybrid traffic to reach those who wish to receive it while continuing to protect consumers from unwanted and unlawful traffic."

"This process is already working to address issues raised in the record and promote continued growth of messaging services," the filing continued. "Twilio's requested relief, in contrast, would undermine rather than promote consumer interests."

Twilio has not yet responded to CTIA's latest filing.

For more:
- see this FCC filing

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