FCC Proposes Caller-Pays Wireless Rules

Federal regulators took aim Thursday at one of the most exasperating things about owning a cellular phone: When someone dials your number, you pay for the privilege of taking the call.

Under a “calling party pays” system tentatively proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, cell-phone users would have the right to designate that people calling their phones would foot the full bill. In a variation, people would be able to designate that they would continue to pay for incoming calls from certain numbers--the home of aged parents, for instance.

The move is “an important step forward for competition” in the cell-phone market, said FCC Chairman William E. Kennard. “It will introduce wireless services to a whole new category of consumers.”

The FCC will now draft formal caller-pays rules, set a period for public comment, and issue a final rule, possibly next year.

Since the advent of cell phones in this country in the 1980s, users have paid for “air time,” regardless of whether they placed or received the call.

Many people don’t buy cell phones because of the incoming charges, Kennard said; others get phones but turn them off when they are not making calls for the same reason, making the phones half as useful as they might be.

Under the proposed system, people dialing a caller-pays cell phone would hear a recorded message saying that they were about to incur charges. The charges would appear on their monthly phone bills.