Sprint (NYSE: S) Nextel is using the carrot-and-stick approach to clean up the direct-to-consumer mobile content industry, and hopefully avoid some kind of lawsuit. The carrier will instigate revenue-share penalties for vendors who violate the Mobile Marketing Association guidelines, with those who repeatedly break the guidelines perhaps forfeiting all the revenue and losing their short codes. Conversely, those who stay within the guidelines “can see as much as a 10 percent bump in revenue splits” reports RCR News. The five-page memo sent to Sprint’s partners outlined nearly 3 dozen potential infractions, and “spells out penalties based on the number of transgressions and level of severity”. The policy also addresses mobile phone numbers which have been recycled, with the new owners paying for the subscription services of the previous owner of the number. RCR opines that Sprint’s rules may be the most rigid of the US carriers, because it assigns payouts based on mathematic formulas.

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Last week Alltel (NYSE: AT) was slapped with a class-action suit over the practices of 3rd party content vendors, and in March AT&T (NYSE: T) agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine to the Florida AG for faulty billing.