A couple of weeks ago we wrote about “bill shock,” the unpleasant experience of receiving a huge, unexpected bill from a wireless company. Now we have some new numbers from the FCC showing the true breadth of bill shock among American consumers. A new FCC survey has found that 30 million Americans – or one in six wireless phone users – have experienced a sharp and sudden increase in their monthly bill not caused by a change in their service plan.

The Federal Communications Commission wants to cut down on “bill shock,” the unpleasant phenomenon consumers experience when they get unexpectedly get a huge wireless phone bill.

The Federal Communications Commission has taken a number of steps which could eventually benefit consumers by making it easier to navigate smart video devices, gain additional “roaming” access for wireless devices, and getting broadband service into areas that currently don’t have it.

Internet consumers lost big – really big – in a decision issued by an appeals court in Washington this week. In essence, the court ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to preserve the freedom of consumers to choose what websites to visit, or programs to download, without interference from big Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon. Unless it is reversed, the ruling appears to allow broadband providers to engage in a whole host of highly egregious anti-consumer activities – up to and including the blocking of lawful content, applications, and devices. And, according to the court, the FCC may not have the legal authority to stop any of it.

The Federal Communications Commission has released the country’s first national broadband plan, and ambitious program to push out high speed Internet service to the nearly 100 million Americans who have no access to it now. We believe real competition in the broadband market must be a key ingredient.

FCC Commissioner Clyburn calls out big Internet service providers on relentless rate hikes, and we like what she said.

More than 93 million Americans are not connected to high-speed Internet at home, according to a new survey from the Federal Communications Commission. We are hopeful a soon-to-be released National Broadband Plan will tackle that problem directly and aggressively.

This week Google announced plans to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We like the idea, if for no other reason than it could put pressure on Internet service providers such as Comcast and AT&T to improve service and offer better prices to consumers.

Lawmakers in Washington will hopefully be asking a lot of tough questions when executives from Comcast and NBC-Universal come before them today to discuss their proposed merger. Like most everyone without direct ties to Comcast, Consumers Union think the proposed marriage of the country's largest cable company and the multi-tentacled NBC-Universal media empire is a truly lousy deal for consumers.

Latinos have a lot at stake as lawmakers and regulators in Washington tackle -- or don't tackle -- the issue of network neutrality. This piece was written by Jessica J. Gonzalez and Parul P. Desai of the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the Media Access Project.

A broad group of industry, labor and public interest organizations, including Consumers Union, have written to the White House and Congress with deep concerns about Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC-Universal. The groups believe that a merger of this size and scope will have a devastating effect on the media marketplace and will result in less competition, higher consumer costs and fewer content choices. It also will give one company unprecedented control over innovative new media that offer news, information, entertainment and cultural programming through emerging technologies. You can read the letter here.

Saying it must be a "vigilant watchdog for the consumer," the Federal Communications Commission is launching a “consumer task force” to advance the commission’s consumer agenda and promote collaboration across the agency. We hope that means a watchdog with both a bark and a bite.

A few weeks back the Federal Communications Commission asked Verizon Wireless to explain its sudden move to double early termination penalties for its high end phones from $175 to $350, including its popular new Droid model. Verizon has now sent a response to the FCC – well, sort of a response, actually.

Comcast and NBC/Universal have made it official. The nation’s largest cable television and residential Internet service provider has announced a huge deal to take over the NBC/Universal media empire. For consumers, this mega deal represents a marriage made in hell.

If you get broadband from your cable company we suggest you sit down and make sure you aren’t drinking any coffee before you read further. We don’t want you spewing hot java all over your computer. In a recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission a Washington-based think tank and media issues advocacy group, Free Press, did some serious digging to figure out what it actually costs cable companies to provide broadband services compared to what they charge you for it. You've been warned.

We are rarely at a loss for words here at www.hearusnow.org, but we have to admit we were left speechless by Verizon’s stunning announcement it’s doubling its already ridiculous penalty on customers who want to get a better phone or service from another company. Beginning next week, Verizon will raise its “early termination fee” to $350 per line for its more advanced phones, including its popular Blackberry devices and its just-introduced Droid.

It’s already hard enough for the average consumer to figure out all those plugs and wires behind a television and other video devices well enough to get all the channels working properly or record programs. So imagine what it would be like if the big media companies were suddenly able to virtually turn off some of those plugs and rendering your perfectly legal and reliable equipment incapable of picking up certain programming you now get just fine. As far-fetched as that might sound, it is exactly what would happen should the Federal Communications Commission go along with a waiver request now pending before it from the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the big movie and television studios.

We hear from thousands of consumers here at www.hearusnow.org and the two subjects they bring up the most – by far – are indecipherable bills and misleading marketing tactics. With that in mind, Consumers Union – the publisher of this blog – has teamed up with six other public interest groups to encourage the Federal Communications Commission to protect consumers from misleading, confusing and harmful advertising and billing practices by phone, cable and wireless providers.

AT&T and Verizon, the country’s two largest wireless carriers, each made announcements yesterday that could help consumers.

It’s no secret that cell phones sometimes drop calls. In fact, that is one of the top complaints we hear from cell phone consumers who email us here at www.hearusnow.org. But even we were a bit surprised by a story making the rounds in recent days about an iPhone user in New York City who took his unit into the local Apple store because he was experiencing so many dropped calls.

The five members of the Federal Communications Commission – including its new chairman and two new commissioners – headed up to Capitol Hill this week for an oversight hearing. There were some good signs for consumers during the session, especially from new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and House Energy and Commerce Commission Chairman Henry Waxman.

A newly-enpanled Federal Communications Commission wasted no time in getting busy on a bevy of important consumer issues at its first meeting on Thursday.

Apple has been taking a lot of heat lately – including from this blog – over its rejection of a nifty application called Google Voice for use on the iPhone. In the wake of the hubbub over Google Voice, some other iffy rejections of applications for the iPhone have been surfacing, in both the mainstream press and the blogosphere. In some ways these other rejections of apps by Apple are just as or more troubling than the Google Voice rebuff.

When Julius Genachowski took over as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in late June, one of his first official actions was to appoint FCC veteran Mary Beth Richards to oversee an ambitious overhaul of the agency. This week Richards talked about her goals and plans for accomplishing that task in an interview with Dow Jones News Service. We liked what she said.

Apple Corp. took a very troubling step this week in rejecting Google’s “Google Voice” software tool, effectively blocking the nifty application from use on Apple’s hugely popular iPhone. Apple’s action points up once again the problem of “handset exclusivity” deals, those ubiquitous agreements by cell phone makers with wireless service providers that chain up consumers.