You're about to have one less excuse for ringing up a preposterous cell phone bill. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile have agreed to a voluntary industry standard to send alerts to customers who are about to go over their voice, text, or data plans, or who enter international roaming zones.

The "voluntary" in voluntary industry standard is a little misleading—the carriers only really went in on this under threat of even stricter government regulation. The new standard was agreed on at CTIA. And while the alerts aren't going into effect immediately—they'll take 12-18 months to officially roll out—it's still quicker than the two years it would take the FCC to enact government regulations. [LA Times, WSJ]

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