The state assembly wants to legislate to prevent promotional text messages

The state assembly wants to legislate to prevent promotional text messages. State legislators are brewing a bill to ban the sending of commercial text messages to mobile phones. The Arizona House Technology and Infrastructure Committee…

State lawmakers are brewing a bill that would ban commercial text messages from being sent to cell phones.

The Arizona House of Representatives Technology and Infrastructure Committee passed a proposal on Thursday that would make it illegal for any individual or company to send commercial information to the public through mobile phone text messages. Fines are $750 for personal conduct and up to $10,000 for corporate conduct.

Currently, this proposal has been submitted to the Arizona House of Representatives.

A similar federal law will take effect in October this year, requiring merchants to get written consent from customers before sending text messages to their phones. The rule does not apply to flight updates, debt collection calls, investigations or bank account fraud alerts.