Posted on: Friday, March 11, 2005
'Truth-in-billing' now extends to cell phones
By Genaro C. Armas
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Regulators voted yesterday to extend "truth-in-billing" guidelines to cell phone bills in hopes it would lead to clearer, shorter statements devoid of unwarranted add-on fees.
All five Federal Communications Commission members supported the measure, which requires cell phone bills to be "brief, clear, non-misleading and in plain language." The guidelines already cover bills for traditional phone service.
The fees, which fall under titles like "Regulatory Assessment Charge" or "Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee" often amount to no more than $1 or $2 a month. Critics contend that customers typically aren't told of such fees when shopping for low-priced monthly cell phone plans so they should not be charged.
The FCC said it was misleading for cell phone companies "to represent discretionary line item charges in any manner that suggests" the fees are taxes or government-mandated charges.
"Wireless consumers deserve accurate, meaningful billing information in a format they can understand," said FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who presided over his final meeting.
Democratic FCC commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein disagreed with a part of the measure that would pre-empt state regulations covering similar billing issues.
States ought to be able to impose regulations on cell phone bills on top of the new federal standards in an attempt to make them clearer, the Democrats said.
"By removing the states' role here, the FCC has set itself up as the sole arbiter of line-item charges," Adelstein said in a statement.
"I'm afraid consumers will remember that when they called this commission for help understanding their phone bills, we hung up," Copps said in a statement.
Although the FCC has received thousands of complaints about line-item charges or other phone bill questions, the agency rarely issues warnings or fines for such violations, Copps said.
The National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates, which asked the FCC to rule on the issue, and consumer groups accused the FCC of weakening consumer protections.
"They extended a toothless regulation," said Patrick Pearlman of the West Virginia Consumer Advocate Division, a branch of the state's public service commission.
Congress has recognized cell phone use as an interstate service, Powell said.
"As a result, it is simply not sustainable to have a multitude of divergent, and at times intrusive, state-by-state billing regulations," he said.
Several state public service commissions applauded the ruling.
"I commend the FCC for its decision to apply a uniform, national set of billing standards to the wireless carriers," Connie Murray, commissioner of the Missouri Public Service Commission, said in a statement.
"I believe that the FCC has acted wisely to ensure that wireless customers in every state are protected by uniform rules requiring transparency in billing, rather than a fragmented system which would allow certain charges to be hidden in one state, but subject to required disclosure in another," Ellen Williams, vice chairman of the Kentucky Public Service Commission, said in a statement.
Powell, who announced in January that he was stepping down this month after four years as chairman and more than seven years as a commissioner, fought back tears after being lavished with praise by the other commissioners.
At meeting's end, he handed the chairman's gavel to FCC Secretary Marlene Dortch, then stood behind his seat at the commission table while receiving a standing ovation.
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
