Opinion: Wireless Carriers and Innovation

This article by Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal is a must read on the eve of the CTIA conference in San Francisco. Keep his thoughts in mind when listening to the various keynote presentations.

$10,000 U.S. Cellular Penalties

U.S. Cellular Corporation is revising its penalties in case of failure by a content provider to adhere to the carrier's rules and regulations, in following 2 areas:

1. A content provider is prohibited from including or transmitting any Binary Content as part of a message unless expressly permitted by the carrier in writing. For each such breach, the content provider is liable for liquidated damages of $10,000. Binary Content is defined as anything that is not 7bit ASCII text. This includes 8bit text, 16bit text, Wap Push messages, MMS messages, SMS Wakeups, vCard, vCal, etc.

   
   

2. A content provider needs to adhere to the Mobile Marketing Association's 'Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services'. For each material breach of such guidelines, the content provider will be liable for liquidated damages of $10,000.
   

AT&T Disconnecting non-SRM compliant premium subscription services

AT&T has alerted us that they will start disconnecting all short codes that run premium subscription campaigns and are not using AT&T's Subscription and Refund Management (SRM) Platform. AT&T will typically not give any warning before disconnecting a particular code.

Free CTIA Conference Pass

The CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment 2007 conference takes place from Oct 23-25, 2007 in San Francisco. Get FREE access to the exhibits and keynotes here. Enter code SFPP. You need to act quickly as the deadline for these passes is this Friday, October 5th. Contact me if you want to meet during the conference.

Alltel price cap and subscription periods

Effective immediately, Alltel is reducing the maximum per message premium price to $9.99. Higher per message prices can be approved on a case-by-case basis but content providers will need to demonstrate the value of the content they'll provide. Also, going forward, Alltel will limit subscription periods to monthly only. Daily and weekly subscriptions are no longer allowed. Existing campaigns will be grandfathered in and won't need to change, but all new campaigns need to adhere to these new policies.

AT&T Zero Rate Policy Change (UPDATED)

AT&T requires the use of 'zero rated' messages (ie. messages that are free to the end user) for all responses to HELP and STOP requests. These responses arrive on the consumer's cell phone via an 11-digit short code provided by AT&T.

AT&T is making two changes to aforementioned policy:

1. The 11-digit short code is replaced by a 4 digit short code. The short code number is 1006.
   
2. Not only responses to HELP and STOP requests need to be zero-rated, but also subscription confirmation and subscription reminder messages.
   

In addition to these changes, AT&T requires that all subscription confirmation messages contain a toll-free technical support number, website address, or AT&T customer support number. Refunds and cancellations should ONLY be processed using AT&T's SRM system.

Quios customers need to ensure that all subscription confirmation and reminder messages are sent with 'price=-1', which will automatically trigger the zero-rate tariff and 4 digit short code on AT&T's network.

UPDATE (10/1/2007): We were informed today to hold off on the implementation of this new policy. Because of consumer litigation, AT&T felt it was necessary to change the policy, and that hasn't changed. So we do expect this new policy to be implemented some time in the future. Stay tuned for more info.

AT&T Delays implementation of OPPC

As previously reported here, AT&T is preparing to roll-out phase 2 of their subscription management system. It's called OPPC which stands for Off-Portal Purchasing Control. The basic idea is that AT&T will take over the responsibility for handling the double opt-in consumer registration process.

AT&T has just announced that it would delay the roll-out of OPPC until Q1 2008. This will give content providers extra time to test their implementation and integration with the OPPC system during Q4 2007. AT&T stresses that the delay does not signal a reduced commitment to switch over to the OPPC system. On the contrary, AT&T intents to invest even more time and effort in making sure that the OPPC platform is successfully rolled out.