If you have any questions on this document, please contact me. Rick is in retirement and finished with this topic so will not respond. Rick provided this document to the carriers and was ignored after working with them for decades as the chair of telecommunications at Venable LLP, Alston & Bird LLP, and Joyce & Jacobs LLP.

Rick also contacted the Washington Post on 30 July and received no response, hence why I’m now making this public. Rick was the Chief Counsel for cybersecurity and communications at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/U.S. Coast Guard, and held the Nation’s highest security clearance, Top Secret/Secured Compartmented Information.

I have related conversations with whistleblowers that provide additional information on this topic. I’m doing this because it is critical to the programmable communications industry’s future. The culture of not washing dirty laundry in public must stop as in the limit its the American public and competition that end up paying for what is decided behind closed doors.

The document “The Campaign Registry and Foreign Ownership: A Matter of National Security” from Frederick (“Rick”) Joyce is important for everyone in our industry to read and act on.

*** For the sake of emphasis, click this link for Rick’s document: “The Campaign Registry and Foreign Ownership: A Matter of National Security” ***

What is happening to TCR should be a concern to everyone in America as we enter an election cycle, and not just those in the programmable communications industry who are paying more in time and cash for A2P SMS because of TCR.

Rick is the former Chief Counsel for Chief Information Officer/Assistant Commandant for C4IT at U.S. Coast Guard, previously Chair of the Telecommunications Group of Venable law firm.

The monopoly entity in the U.S. responsible for protecting all of our 10 digit mobile phone accounts from spam, a little known entity based in Reston, VA called The Campaign Registry (https://www.campaignregistry.com/) is about to be sold from one foreign entity, Kaleyra, Inc. of Italy, to another foreign entity, Tata Communications of India. It appears the federal government’s CFIUS (The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) review process is likely to approve this transaction.

For reasons that Giovanni (Johnny) Tarone will explain at the TADSummit Podcast on the 1st September, the three major wireless carriers in the U.S., T Mobile, Verizon, and ATT, allowed an Italian owned entity to own and be responsible for screening text messages sent to every 10 digit phone number in the United States.

We all need to act:

• For everyone reading this blog, contact your elected representatives and make them aware of Rick’s document, urgent action is required, election marketing messages could and have been interfered with.
• For the carriers, the programmable telecoms industry has become highly imbalanced. A fox (an SMS aggregator) is guarding the hen house (TCR). The pricing and processes of A2P SMS is stifling competition, as evidenced by this Route Mobile article. A reset is required to improve competition and truly reduce SPAM.
• For all the D2C (Direct to Carrier) aggregators, it’s time to level the playing field in the US for A2P SMS; come join the conversation at TADSummit, Sinch has!
• For the programmable communications industry, you need to make your voice heard. Talk about this post online, raise it with your aggregators and customers. Your business is being adversely impacted because we’re not openly talking about TCR and many other issues around voice and messaging spam. TADSummit‘s policy is no BS and we’re going to lead an open industry-wide discussion.

Check out other articles in this series:

Messaging Monopolies

Understanding TCR and Kaleyra Part 2

Understanding TCR and Kaleyra Part 1