COMMENTS
OF
PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, FREE PRESS,
CONSUMER FEDERATION OF AMERICA, CONSUMERS UNION, EDUCAUSE,
MEDIA ACCESS PROJECT, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION, U.S. PIRG,
ASSEMBLYMAN RICHARD L. BRODSKY, CREDO MOBILE, INC.

Summary

There is a real and ongoing problem in the U.S. communications network today. Those who control the entry points into the communications system want to be able to control who can speak to the public and what can be spoken about through the rapidly-growing medium of text messaging. Wireless carriers are currently openly engaging in discrimination against potential competitors, and claim the right to exercise editorial control over what their customers read and who they can communicate with. In response to this problem, Public Knowledge and a coalition of concerned public interest organizations, short code service providers, and legislators filed a petition asking the Commission to declare that text messaging services, including the provisioning and delivery of text messages addressed by short code, are subject to Title II nondiscrimination rules.

The Commission has recognized the importance of this issue and has sought the public’s comments. Since then, parties including communications companies, political campaigns, commercial text message service providers, public interest and advocacy organizations, and hundreds of individual citizens have filed comments supporting the petition and asking the Commission to protect text messaging.

In their own comments, the mobile carriers have tried to convince the Commission that there is no longer a problem, that the public is best served when carriers exert editorial control over the content that consumers receive, that the Commission lacks the authority to regulate text messaging services, and that the carriers’ First Amendment rights will be harmed if text messaging services must be provided in a nondiscriminatory way. These arguments are incorrect as a matter of law and policy.