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At today's FCC open meeting, the Chairman and the four other commissioners unanimously voted to propose rules to prevent Bill Shock. These proposed rules would require mobile carriers to send their customers a voice or text message when they are approaching their limit for a text, voice, or data plan, and when they are starting to incur roaming fees. The Commission notes that there are already similar rules in the European Union, where these alerts appear to be helping consumers without putting an undue burden on wireless companies. You can read the proposed rules and the commissioners' and Chairman's statements here.

We in the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, which prepared these proposed rules, are happy to have the full support of the Commission as we go forward. What happens next is a period of comment to allow all interested parties – including the industry, consumer groups, and the public at large – to weigh in on our proposals. That's where you come in. You can go to our Consumer Help Center, at fcc.gov/consumers, and use the "File a Comment With the FCC" button to make your views known. If Bill Shock has happened to you, you can "File a Consumer Complaint" from the same website. You can also share your stories with us posting a comment to this blog, or sending me an e-mail at joel.gurin@fcc.gov.

On the way in this morning, I got an email from a friend that rings familiar to way too many Americans.

My friend said that he incurred $2,000 in extra data charges while on a trip overseas, despite buying an "international plan." He added that this was "more than 15 times" what he had expected to pay.

He was a victim of what we at the FCC call "bill shock," and, according to our research, there are 30 million Americans just like him.

Bill shock occurs when consumers see their bills jump unexpectedly by tens, hundreds, or thousands of dollars from one month to the next. Common cases are when a subscriber is charged for unknowingly exceeding his or her allotments for voice, text or data, or gets hit with roaming charges that are unexpected.

A few hours ago, I delivered a speech highlighting what the FCC is doing to put an end to bill shock, as well as other fees and billing practices that are giving consumers headaches.

I'm proud that the FCC is pursuing an aggressive Consumer Empowerment Agenda. In a nutshell, our strategy is to educate, empower, and enforce.

We are working to harness technology and promote transparency to empower consumers with the information they need to make smart decisions and to make the market work. And when there is bad conduct in the market, the FCC has acted, and we will continue to act. Consumers must know that the FCC's got their back.

Based on your comments and suggestions, we've just released updates to our FCC.gov/developer API's. In particular we have made two enhancements: one to help navigate the complexities of census geography, and one that's purely stylistic.

Census geography changes, while small or obscure, can be significant. A tiny change in a census boundary can mean that a rate based calculation includes a completely different denominator for population or demographic value. These changes, if not watched for carefully can be significant to the results of querying large federal databases.

To assist the community of developers building off FCC tools, we'll try and point out these small but significant changes when we see them.

The biggest change between 2000 census boundaries and 2009 census boundaries was the addition of a sub identifier to the smallest unit of boundary, the block. This addition allows for finer resolution to the map base. However, because of other changes like population growth, demographic switches, and land use changes, the external boundaries of the block boundaries have also changed.

In order to keep up with these issues, we are supplementing our FCC Census Block API with the ability to query for the current year as well as previous years. From now on, the current (e.g. 2009) year search will be the normal REST query on the documentation page like this;

http://data.fcc.gov/api//block/find?latitude=37.21&longitude=-120.4356

To gain access to a previous year, all you need to do is insert the year in the url like this;

http://data.fcc.gov/api//block/2000/find?latitude=37.21&longitude=-120.4356

(Part of the ongoing WISENET Series)

It should come as no surprise that “mobile money” has taken off in the developing world because the need for it there is massive, and the opportunity it presents for network operators and banks is also huge.  The term “mobile money” includes all monetary transactions done through a mobile phone.  When I talk about mobile money in the developing countries, I am not talking about the advanced services in which you can wave your telephone at the vending machine for contactless payment of your candy bar.  For the most part I’m talking basic services like getting loans and paying bills.  This basic mobile banking is forecast to generate $5 billion in fees by 2012.  In Africa, for example, approximately 80% of the people have no or very little access to banking services, but they are not alone in being “unbanked” or “under-banked.” There are a number of reasons why people are unbanked.  They may not have one or more basic things that a bank may require to open a bank account:  an ID card, permanent address, a job.  In some cases, they may have all that is required but simply not live near a bank branch.  Because most financial transactions in the developing world take place at the corner “mom and pop stores,” mobile money services allow these small shops to act like branches.  Although they may not offer you a free toaster for signing up for banking services, these convenience stores are getting the job done.  Let me tell you how in my next few blog posts.