By David Nicklaus
Americans send nearly 5 billion text messages a day because it's fast, convenient and mostly spam-free.
Does that sound like something regulators need to fix? Fortunately, the Federal Communications Commission decided no.
The article is wrong. It's a clearly partisan mischaracterization for ideological reasons.
What the FCC did is CHANGE the status of SMS, potentially breaking it. It was a telecom service. They change it to an information service. They claimed this was to permit spam blocking, but they already encourage blocking of spam phone calls, which are telecom, so that was specious.
An SMS text (and MMS is different) is, plain and simple, a telegram. It's more specifically a radiotelegram sent using the signaling network. Bits in, bits out. Pure telecom. Under the FCC's new rules, phone companies can monitor and mess with your texts, datamine their content, insert ads, etc.
I suggest reading Cmr. Jessica Rosenworcel's dissent, on the FCC web site. That explains it.
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