https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/9k4xee/verizon-is-making-it-harder-for-teachers-to-contact-students-who-dont-have-smartphones

Teachers across the country are criticizing Verizon for introducing a new fee that will disrupt a popular app used to communicate with students and parents.

Remind is a kind of chat app/social media hybrid used by teachers, parents, and students to keep up-to-date on assignments and events. It also has an app-to-phone texting function that allows educators and admin to send text messages to parents and students who don’t have the app. But Verizon is introducing a new fee on app-to-phone messages—an effort to curb robotexting—that will make it too expensive for Remind to continue offering this service for Verizon phones, the company’s CEO told Motherboard.