SmartReply Warns of Messaging Price Hike

SmartReply, a mobile marketing firm, said it will increase pricing on text-message campaigns if Verizon Wireless puts its proposed 3-cent company messaging fee hike in place, MediaPost reports. This is the first of what we’re expecting to be a rather large backlash against the carrier’s plan.

“If Verizon’s new messaging charge does go ahead on November 1st as threatened, thousands of providers will also be forced to increase their price structures, including ours,” said Scott Springer, vice president for strategic services at Irvine, Calif.-based SmartReply, in the article. “This will completely upset the model upon which our industry has been built.”

Verizon seems to have backed off of the initial announcement, though it hasn’t committed one way or another. “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,” the carrier said in a statement, as part of an overall re-evaluation of the messaging marketplace.

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