Social Machinery

Some weeks back, the United States Federal Communications Commission released a survey on consumer mobile experience. The survey indicated that 30 million Americans or one in six mobile users have experienced  “bill shock,” a sudden increase in their monthly bill that is not caused by a change in service plan.

It also discovered that almost 50% of mobile users who have plans with early termination fees and 66% of home broadband users with early termination plans don’t know the amount of the fees they’re accountable for.

As this problem has become so common, FCC has decided to launch an education campaign to rationalize spending on mobile telephony. Most of these surprises came to customers who had contracted a mobile data rate plan with fair usage policy. As noted, many cell phone users do not know if they have to pay an early termination fees or different rates after finishing their data quota. One possible reason for this is that consumers’ mobile bill may not be clear enough, to some people at least, so they can acquire and understand information about data and voice policies.

Even more surprising is that 84% of Americans victims of “bill shocks” stated that their service provider did not contact them when they were about to exceed the minutes, text messages or downloading data contract. Also, 88% said they were not contacted after they exceed their limits on minutes of use, text messages, or data downloads.

The monthly increases varied, although more than a third of consumers said their bill increased by at least 50 USD and nearly 25% said more than $ 100 USD.

After the results of this study, FCC was quick to say the need for more transparency from companies and that if this practice doesn’t becomes a voluntary approach it will take steps to make it enforceable.

Actually, U.S. regulator wants to take the example from the European Commission policy in the treatment of roaming data. In March this year The Commission ruled that all European mobile operators must offer their customers a limit spending on roaming data traffic after data will be bared to protect users from bill shock through mobile data. Customers need to apply until July 1, 2010 to benefit from this solution. However after this date, customers will be bared on roaming data at a set limit of 50 euros. With this policy EC expect to ensure greater transparency and consumer protection.