IP: SMS messages to cellphones

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

>Resent-Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:22:25 -0700
>Resent-From: rjoffe@centergate.com
>Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 12:22:19 -0700
>From: Rodney Joffe <rjoffe@centergate.com>
>
>
>Hello Dave,
>
>I'd be interested in seeing if any of your IP readers have experienced
>this problem, and if they've discovered a magical cure...
>
>AT&T has some tens of thousands of AT&T cell phone subscribers in the
>Phoenix area. Like all cell phone providers, they have been assigned
>blocks of numbers for their subscribers. These blocks are reasonably
>large (I am in a block of 9,999 numbers - 602-418-xxxx).
>
>A local mortgage company has discovered a great way of generating
>business, by sending SMS ads to everyone in the block. The SMS service
>has no way of displaying the headers, and AT&T claims that there is no
>law against sending SMS messages to cell phones (I had thought the FCC
>had enacted regulations that prohibited sales or unsolicited commercial
>calls to cellphones). Their solution is to offer to change my cell phone
>number. Obviously this is a non-starter... the scam consists of sending
>the ads to the entire known block of AT&T assigned numbers so the
>problem would follow me.
>
>This looks like the spam issue all over again. Maybe market forces will
>cause AT&T to solve the problem - we're currently getting bids to
>replace our 25 AT&T phones. But of course the spammers/scammers probably
>know the npa/nxx's of all the cellular providers. This is rather
>troubling.
>
>--
>Rodney Joffe
>CenterGate Research Group, LLC.
>http://www.centergate.com
>"Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(SM)



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