new mexico senator tom udall proposed legislation that would require carriers to get permission from customers who have hit their planned limits before allowing them to keep racking up charges. the wirelessssiaon reesti tnaon rgtarer ooseheew pls. th aueost consumers are satisfied with their service, and can easily monitor their own bills. there are a number of tools that every major carrier provides, where you can find out in real-time at any time of the day or night exactly what the status of your billing is. believe me, the last thing anybody wants in the industry is an unhappy customer. clearly, the rosenours and bob st. germane were unhappy. we re not paying such an outside landish amount. reporter: t-mobile said the charges were valid. still, as a one-time courtesy, they reduced their charges by half. now we re paranoid using our cell phones. we have not had any closure.
and this and this, and then i got my husband, and i said allen, something is wrong. reporter: for the price of bob st. germane s bill, he could have bought a new car. $18,000 of data charges when his son went online. theirs are extreme cases, but millions of others have experienced some form of what s called bill shock. it s even caught the attention of fcc chairman julius general cow ski. how big a problem is this? our survey found one out of every six mobile subscribers, 30 million people, have had some form of bill shock at the end of the month. it s obviously a very significant problem. reporter: the fcc is proposing what it calls a simple technology solution, mandatory warnings from the cell phone companies, whenever a subscriber runs up an oversized bill. before you go over the limit, you can get an alert, a text alert, a voice alert, from your mobile company, saying, hey, you re getting close to the limit. reporter: some lawmakers want to take it a step further.
reporter: bob fought his $18,000 bill relentlessly, and verizon eventually dropped the charges all together. but it didn t end his outrage, or his demands. you need to be contacted, proactively, early, with a circuit breaker on your bill like the credit cards do. obviously, the battle continues, and for its part, the fcc is planning to move forward with its push for mandatory alerts this spring. we spoke to several of the major carriers, including verizon, t-mobile and at&t, and in many cases they say they already send automatic alerts and insist they are constantly working to improve the system. contessa brewer. thank you for watching. i ll see you back here at noon eastern, 9:00 a.m. in the west. up next, andrea michelle reports. hello, andrea. hi, con tessu. up next, israel s ambassador joins us with the very latest on today s bombing in downtown jerusalem. plus, elizabeth taylor s sixth husband, former u.s.