Lobby Groups Argues for Less Regulation on SMS Services

The USA's Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) has argued that short code for SMS's should not be subject to regulation. It filed a comment supporting its views with the US telecoms regulator, the FCC following calls from other lobby groups for increased regulation of SMS services.

There have been complaints in the past that the operators were overcharging for SMS short code services - and even an issue over alleged censorship of messages. While the issue focused on a political campaign, the operators argued that they had to retain the right to block some messages - if only to be allowed to stop spam flooding the networks.

"The use of short codes is one of the most recent innovations in wireless communication and is an example of the gradual development of more complex services better devised to meet customer needs," said Barry Aarons, IPI senior research fellow.

The IPI says that complaints surfaced in the petition have already been resolved or will likely be resolved by the marketplace. In comparison to regulation, marketplace solutions are consistently superior.

Ultimately, IPI says that the FCC should not use a review as an excuse to expand regulation to text messages. Furthermore, the Commission should begin to distinguish between genuine consumer complaints and complaints filed by activist groups merely gaming the system in pursuit of a larger regulatory agenda.

"A thorough review of this issue by the Commission should result in a finding that no regulation needs to be applied to short codes services," they concluded.

The Institute for Policy Innovation is an independent, non-profit public policy organization based in Dallas, Texas. The conservative Capital Research Center ranked IPI as amongst the most conservative groups in the US, scoring it as an eight on a scale of one to eight.

Posted to the site on 15th April 2008