In its October 28 monthly meeting, the FCC plans to vote on adoption of a notice of proposed rulemaking designed to eliminate some service provider requirements for consumer broadband labels and determine whether the commission will solicit comments on other ways to make the labels easier for providers to comply with while also ensuring they still benefit consumers.
Impact: The FCC’s requirement for Internet service providers to make available, at the point of sale, consumer broadband labels showing important information including pricing (like details about bundling, promotional rates, and fees), performance (typical speed and latency), and data allowances finally went into effect in April 2024 for large broadband companies and in October 2024 for smaller providers after years of wrangling. But the deregulatory environment under current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr means that just 18 months later, the FCC is expected to vote on a 2-1 party line vote to make changes to the label requirements. Carr said ahead of the vote that the FCC will “reexamine broadband nutrition labels so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff. We want consumers to get quick and easy access to the information they want and need to compare broadband plans (as Congress has provided) without imposing unnecessary burdens.”
The six requirements targeted for revision include that providers itemize state and local pass-through fees, read their labels to consumers over the phone, provide information on the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity Program, display labels in consumer account portals, make labels available in machine readable format, and archive labels for at least two years after a product is no longer offered to new customers. The label requirements the FCC wants to seek comment on eliminating include the multilingual display requirements and others deemed “unduly burdensome” while providing minimal benefits. This notice is under the auspices of Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative that seeks to eliminate as many FCC rules as possible and opens the door for more substantial changes to the labels stemming from broadband providers, per LightReading. The requirement to itemize all fees generated pushback from trade groups starting in 2023, but the FCC under Biden Administration Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel held firm on that rule as part of its emphasis on the importance of transparency for consumers, who Rosenworcel said needed to be able to choose their Internet service without being hit with surprise fees. She pointed out that providers could bypass any burden imposed by the itemization requirement by rolling fees into the base monthly price, per Ars Technica.
Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge decried the potential erosion of consumer protections under the FCC’s proposed action under Carr, stating in an ex parte filing that the planned changes will disproportionately affect vulnerable populations, with the lack of fee disclosures likely to impact low-income households while the lack of a phone reading requirement would hurt older cohorts and low-literacy adults, something that will be further exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s cancellation of funding for the Digital Equity Act. According to Broadband Breakfast, a recent paper from York University in Canada indicates that providers have had a loose interpretation of the rules around broadband labels from the start, with many ignoring standardized formatting despite FCC-provided templates. It appears the efforts to change the requirements could be a precursor to eliminating the labels altogether.
