The FCC's new "bill shock" rule for cell phones doesn't go far enough

On Oct. 14, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a rule compelling mobile service providers to alert customers on the verge of exceeding monthly usage limits and incurring overage charges. These would be in the form of text or voice alerts on the phone itself, not unlike the conspicuous emergency message you're liable to receive if you're late paying your cell phone bill. Mobile carriers would similarly have to alert consumers if they were about to incur roaming charges. They would also have to give customers better and more conspicuous tools to keep track of how close they were to reaching a usage limit, and perhaps provide them with a tool to cap usage automatically so that exceeding usage limits became impossible.

This regulation, if made final after the required 60-day comment period, would be a big improvement over the status quo. Even so, it doesn't go far enough. It starts from the wrong premise. The FCC rule shouldn't just compel cell phone companies to give consumers conspicuous warnings before they rack up big overages. They should make such overages impossible. Rather than give consumers a tool that could cap usage and prevent overages (something Verizon, incidentally, claims it already provides), the mobile carriers should cap usage themselves, either when overages begin or when some noncatastrophic overage level has been reached. At that point, consumers should receive a text or voice message alerting them that if they want to keep running up overages they must affirmatively tell the mobile carrier that they want to by dialing in some word or number. They must, in other words, leave the mobile carrier with absolutely no doubt that they have given this weighty question the attention it deserves. In the few instances where consumers signal that they understand the stakes and want to keep racking up overages anyway, they should of course be permitted to do so.