FCC Examining Regulation, Other Ways to Respond to Wireless Complaints
A new FCC survey shows that “bill shock” is a major concern to wireless customers, said Joel Gurin, chief of the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. The commission will consider imposing rules on carriers, but no decision has been made, Gurin said. CTIA went on the attack immediately, asking why the FCC seems intent on micro-managing a competitive industry.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
"We really can’t say at this point whether this all will result in a rulemaking or voluntary standards,” Gurin told reporters. “We have begun some conversations with industry and I think what’s important about this survey is it gives us a common ground of understanding.”
Gurin said the bureau plans to reach out to carriers. “Our initial decisions really have been with the larger industry groups,” he said. “We're not at a point yet where we have had extensive discussions with individual carriers. … It’s certainly our intent to work with industry.” Gurin said the FCC “is not making any assumptions” about carriers’ motives.
"I am very troubled with the current direction the FCC is taking with respect to the wireless industry -- from the messaging sent last week in the Mobile Competition Report to today’s survey release,” said CTIA President Steve Largent. “It seems the Commission is going to attempt to micromanage what is an incredible array of choices for consumers.” Largent said carriers go to some lengths to keep their customers informed about their bills. “If the FCC is interested in controlling ’shock’ on consumer bills, they should address the most egregious part of consumers’ bills, which is the almost 16 percent rate of taxes and fees imposed by federal, state and local governments on wireless consumers."
The survey found that one in six wireless subscribers responding -- representative of 30 million Americans -- said they have gotten “bill shock” from a sudden, unexpected increase in their monthly charges. Among other results, 88 percent of those surveyed said their wireless company did not contact them after their bill suddenly went up and 84 percent said their carrier did not contact them when they were about to exceed their allowances for minutes, text messages or data downloads.
Gurin said the survey raises questions about whether carriers are making contract terms clear to subscribers. For example, 54 percent of wireless subscribers said they would have to pay an early termination fee and 18 percent weren’t sure. For home broadband customers, 21 percent said they would have to pay a fee of that kind and 38 percent weren’t sure. The FCC reported on answers to only a handful of the more than 60 questions asked in the survey. Results about broadband services are to be released next week.
"The major take-home message from all of this is that people still don’t know what they really should know in order to be able to manage these kinds of fees and billing issues in a way that gets them the best service in the best possible way,” Gurin said. “I would say this is for us a validating and confirmatory survey. It’s not startling news. But as far as I know I think it may be the first or the largest survey that we've seen … that really outlines exactly the scope of the problems, and we consider it a very valuable guide.”