VZW to raise fees on messaging aggregators

Verizon Wireless is weighing the possibility of charging a 3-cent-per-message fee to SMS aggregators that use its network to distribute text content. An email from Verizon’s billing provider OpenMarket detailing the new fee began circulating among aggregators and content providers this week, setting off a flood of media coverage and criticism against Verizon. But Verizon officials said today that while the carrier does plan to reassess the fees it charges aggregators, it has made no final decision yet.

SMS aggregators such as mBlox and VeriSign deliver SMS text alerts, promotions and interactive voting notifications to customers across all of the operators’ networks. All operators currently charge aggregators and their content provider customers a nominal fee to pass on these automated messages to their customers, but Verizon is proposing an additional transaction fee on top of that charge.

Verizon Wireless issued a statement today confirming that they have notified text messaging aggregators that it will increase fees, but a VZW spokesman Jeffery Nelson said that the amount has not yet been determined. The email circulating amongst its partners this week was a draft intended to stimulate business discussion and was not a final policy, Nelson said.

“We recently notified text messaging aggregators -- those for-profit companies that provide services to content providers to aggregate and bill for their text messaging programs--that we are exploring ways to offset significantly increased costs for delivering billions upon billions of text messages each month,” Nelson said via email. “Specific information in one proposal, which would impose a small per-message fee on for-profit content aggregators for commercial messages, has been mistakenly characterized as a final decision to implement.”