Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The FCC is looking to eliminate some of its broadband labeling requirements for ISPs.
- Broadband “nutrition” labels were introduced to make it easier for consumers to compare prices and services, fees inclusive.
- The FCC teases further interest in backpedaling on labeling requirements it believes “provide minimal benefit to consumers.”
When you’re signing up for internet access, how confident are you about what your bill’s actually going to look like? ISPs and cellular carriers both have a reputation for positively opaque billing practices, piling on fees and passing taxes along to end users. As a consequence, responsible lawmakers pushed for legislation aimed at simplifying bills, and forcing ISPs to be upfront and clear about all their fees. But right now, current FCC leadership is doing its darndest to undo some of those changes and make things easier for the ISPs.
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In a new report, The Verge highlights the FCC’s proposal to “empower broadband consumers” by eliminating numerous billing and labeling requirements for broadband providers. Instead of directly benefiting consumers, though, the changes outlined appear structured solely to reduce the reporting burden on ISPs, allowing them to stop itemizing certain fees, dialing back requirements for displaying and archiving pricing labels, and no longer requiring that information be shared with customers over the phone.
Beyond the changes currently being proposed, the FCC also seeks comment on more anti-consumer measures, like doing away with multilingual requirements, or the extremely vague “further streamlining and eliminating any other label requirements that are unduly burdensome and provide minimal benefit to consumers.”
If that sounds like language that could be used to justify basically any change that’s good for ISPs and bad for their subscribers — well, that’s only because you’re reading it correctly.
None of this sound great, especially in the context of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announcing his intent to reexamine broadband labeling in order to “separate the wheat from the chaff” — presumably further weakening the requirements for ISPs to present clear breakdowns of fees and pricing. Undoing pro-consumer regulations like those has been a stated goal of the current administration, and we would not be at all surprised to see such efforts continue and intensify.
What that’s going to mean the next time you purchase internet service, we can’t yet say, but maybe prepare yourself in advance for a little sticker shock.
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