Consumer grievances against wireless companies are taking on a new dimension. For more than a decade, mobile-phone customers have griped vociferously about what they consider unfair billing and inadequate wireless voice calling. But the advent of mobile notes services — from texting to gaming to social networking to Web surfing — has given subscribers a whole host of new beefs to complain about.

In the past few months, users have filed class actions against AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and many smaller wireless service providers. The complaints cover a multitude of alleged sins, from excessive roaming charges to text-message spam. One filed in April says Verizon Wireless should pay damages for harm suffered by a 14-year-old girl after she was sexually assaulted by an adult male who contacted her through an World Wide Web profile she created using her cell phone. Another attempts to hold Verizon Wireless and third-party subject matter providers responsible for illegal gambling by

users. Verizon Wireless declined to comment.

Confusion by Pricing

What these seemingly different lawsuits have in common is that they reflect users’ discontent with a wave of new services, many of them Web-focused, that are crucial to the wireless industry. Though slow to take off in the U.S., particularly in comparison with the rest of the world, text messaging, wireless music, and video services are finally entering the mainstream. AT&T received 21.5 percent of its wireless revenues from info services in the first quarter, up from 16 percent a year earlier. Industry revenue from the larger category of wireless info, which includes mobile subject matter and Web access, rose 53 percent, to $23 billion, in 2007, according to industry group CTIA. With increased usage comes new frustrations.

Damian Fernandez tapped into that rising ill will when he launched a class action on behalf of users of Apple’s iPhone. The…

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