Many of us woke up to an announcement from Remind that they are going to discontinue text message delivery for teachers, students, and parents who use Verizon Wireless services. As is explained here, Verizon has increased the fee it charges Remind to deliver text messages. That fee will cost Remind eleven times more than it currently does. Therefore, on January 28th Remind will stop delivering text messages to Verizon wireless subscribers.

To be clear, Remind is not shutting down or discontinuing text message delivery on other wireless carriers in the United States. This only affects those who use Verizon wireless services. But as Verizon is one of the two dominant wireless carriers in the U.S. there is a good chance that this could impact 50% or more of the people connected to your Remind account.

If you, your students, or your students’ parents use Remind and Verizon wireless, the in-app push notifications will still work and will be your only option for mobile notifications other than email. You can get the Remind Android app here and the Remind iPhone app here. Information about enabling push notifications and email notifications is available here.