Ever wonder why carriers don t send text usage alerts for your minutes iPhone

Nope, never wondered about it at all because it depends on the network. Some do, some don't. Some require you to sign up for a text notification service. Some provide other methods for checking your remaining minutes (such as an app, sending an SMS, calling a number).

Which carrier sends you SMS automatically when you are about to exceed your monthly minute allowance? AT&T does not have such an automated service. The methods that carriers provide now require the customer to manually intentionally do a check on remaining minutes. However, how many of us will always remember to check before making or after receiving a call??? The better way is to get automated alerts when we are say 50%, 70%, 90% of our minute allowance. Then we can stop paying additional minutes. Don't you agree?

Carriers should have done this way before they did it for data.

Heaven forfend I should actually have to take responsibility for my own cell phone usage! It's appalling!

In Europe lots of networks offer it as a (free) service. In your country, US Cellular do:

http://www.uscellular.com/overage-protection/index.html

How I wish that more carriers will offer such a service. BTW, is the usage alert real time? Do you get the alert immediately after you exceed the threshold or is there some delay? I know that for AT&T the usage report you get from calling *MIN#/*DATA# is not realtime. "There may be delays processing network call records. "Minutes Remaining" or "Data Remaining" may not reflect airtime/data used within the last two to five days and does not include recent roaming minutes due to delayed processing."