The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released a study this week which shows that 30 million Americans have experienced “bill shock” after seeing their monthly mobile phone bill.
“Bill shock” means seeing an unexpected increase in the bill, even if the subscriber has not changed their plan.
3000 people were surveyed by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the FCC, and 2400 had mobile phones. Of those 2400, 17 percent said at least one time in the last year the experienced “bill shock.”
The FCC says 17 percent of all mobile phone users in the U.S. adds up to 30 million Americans that have experienced the unexpected increase in their bill.
84 percent of those that had experienced the increase say their carrier did not warn them at all that they were on the verge of exceeding some portion of their plan, be it minutes, texts, or data bandwidth. 35 percent said their bill increased by $50, while 23 percent said the fee was $100 or higher.
The results are part of the FCC’s ongoing investigation into “bill shock.”
The CTIA, which represents the wireless industry says the real “bill shock” is the excessive taxes and levies that come as part of every bill.
“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,” says CTIA president and CEO Steve Largent.
Result for: mobile phone users
China’s Internet population, the largest in the world, continues to grow at an exponential pace, jumping 29 percent year-on-year to 384 million users, thanks mainly to rapid growth in the mobile phone arena.
Mobile phone users surfing the Internet rose 106 percent, to 233 million, thanks to the launch of 3G networks in the nation. China’s overall population is about 1.4 billion.
Online commerce in China totaled 250 billion yuan ($37 billion USD).
Result for: mobile phone users
Google has added real-time results to its search engine this week, allowing for up-to-the-second updates from social networks networks such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
Microsoft’s Bing search engine announced a similar partnership in October for real-time results.
“I would say that real time search is the natural evolution of universal search,” says Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience.
Mayer also added that Google was not selling ads alongside the real-time searches just yet, waiting instead until the consumer experience with the RT searches was “perfected.”
Additionally, Google announced the launch of Google Goggles, a service that allows mobile phone users to take pictures of products and then receive pricing and other results about the product.
