Verizon charges new “spam” fee for texts sent from teachers to students

A free texting service used by teachers, students, and parents may stop working on the Verizon Wireless network because of a dispute over texting fees that Verizon demanded from the company that operates the service. As a result, teachers that use the service have been expressing their displeasure with Verizon. Remind—the company that offers the classroom communication service—criticized Verizon for charging the new fee. Remind said its service's text message notifications will stop working on the Verizon network on Jan 28 unless Verizon changes course. "To offer our text-messaging service free of charge, Remind has always paid for each text that users receive or send," Remind said in a notice to users. "Now, Verizon is charging Remind an additional fee intended for companies that send spam over its network." Verizon says the fee must be charged to fund spam-blocking services. Remind statement continued, "The fee will increase our cost of supporting text messaging to at least 11 times our current cost—forcing us to end free Remind text messaging for the more than 7 million students, parents, and educators who have Verizon Wireless as their carrier."