Since the very first cell phone customer fired up their giant handset, people have been complaining that their wireless phone bills have been hard to predict. There have been plenty of times when people have reported being completely shocked by their cell phone bill. Unfortunately for most of those people, it seems that most cellular providers are going out of their way to be even less transparent when it comes to billing. Now the federal government, in the form of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC (News - Alert)), has rolled out new regulations that are directly aimed at combating “bill shock.”

According to the FCC, one in six of Americans have come across a wireless bill that left us in awe as far as how large the amount was. The agency claims that as many as 30 million Americans have incurred extra charges for going over their minutes, or talking or texting in roaming areas. The FCC is most concerned about these charges because the agency claims that in 88 percent of the cases, the customers were not alerted that they were incurring extra fees.

The FCC has worked out a deal with the CTIA, the largest wireless carrier group in the world, that would have companies like Verizon, AT&T (News - Alert) and T-Mobile send free text messages to customers who are approaching overages in their service. The FCC released a statement detailing what the agency hopes will come of this agreement. 

“In agreeing to honor the code, the carriers have committed to provide two alerts to subscribers when they are about to incur overage charges: one when they approach, and another when they exceed plan allowances for voice, data and text. Alerts will also be sent when subscribers are about to incur additional international roaming charges after their devices have registered while traveling abroad.”

The alerts will being going out in October and the FCC has released a website where wireless customers can go to see which carriers have entered into the agreement. This website has the added bonus of attempting to shame those companies (like Sprint (News - Alert)) which have not yet signed onto the pact.