A showdown between Verizon Wireless and Remind will impact students throughout Alabama. Remind is a company used by school districts to spread important information to students and parents, but a new fee from Verizon changes the services Remind provides.
The sound of a Remind text notification is something Hartselle High School Senior Emma Bennich hears often, "We use it in almost all my classes, so I probably get at least 7 or 8 messages a day from it," said Bennich.

Teachers aren't the only ones who send out messages, "Coaches use it too and so does all of our clubs," said Bennich.
According to Verizon, Remind users send 1.6 billion text messages a year and to protect Verizon clients from what they call spam they will now charge Remind, and other text aggregation companies, a fee.
Remind said that fee increases their costs too much, so on January 28th they won't be sending texts to Verizon customers, which means some students may not get important information.
The Superintendent of Hartselle City Schools said Remind let them know they're working to resolve the issue with Verizon, "They are still trying to negotiate with Verizon and so then they'd have more information prior to January 28th," said Dr. Dee Dee Jones.
In the mean time, it's causing some student to worry, "A bunch of kids were like really concerned with it, cause they were like 'how am I going to know when I have upcoming tests,'" said Bennich.
Remind said the solution is to download their app to still receive free messages. This does not impact people who have other phone providers.
According to Hartselle City Schools, many districts across the state use Remind. WAAY 31 called Huntsville City and Madison City schools to see if this impacts them. Both said they use a different company to distribute information.
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