Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reader Forum section. In an attempt to broaden our interaction with our readers we have created this forum for those with something meaningful to say to the wireless industry. We want to keep this as open as possible, but maintain some editorial control so as to keep it free of commercials or attacks. Please send along submissions for this section to our editors at: [email protected].
The FCC has announced that wireless customers will begin receiving real-time alerts next year if they are about to go over their monthly voice, data or text-message limits. While this is a typical practice for some operators, making it mandatory is a favorable development for both U.S. carriers and their consumers – and, based on carriers’ widespread acceptance of the new standards, they are well aware of this fact.
Carriers will not benefit in the long run by allowing customers to unassumingly run up large bills. Such behavior renders consumers prime targets for mobile exploitation, and put carriers in the hot-seat when it comes time to assign blame.
I, for one, recently experienced an “incident” whereby I was notified – just two weeks into my monthly billing cycle – that I was at 90% of my monthly data quota. I inspected my data usage online and was surprised to see that at various times over the previous few days, I had been transferring vast amounts of data at 4 a.m. I called my carrier’s customer care department who suggested (naïvely, in my opinion) that data transfer was “normal” and that “Android applications are often updated automatically.” As an informed subscriber, I understand that, but over 50 megabytes of transfers night after night without my knowledge/approval? Was I a spambot?
And before you ask: yes, I had a client security app installed – and no, it knew nothing of this behavior (a reason to favor network-centric security solutions if I ever heard one).
But bottom-line, I would have known nothing of this had my provider not indicated I was nearing my quota. It is essential that as consumers, we maintain an awareness of the charges on our bills.
