FCC Adds A ‘Nutrition’ Label To Broadband So You Can Clearly See When Monopolies Are Ripping You Off
from the transparently-ripped-off dept
After countless years pondering the idea, the FCC has finally announced that it’s going to politely ask the nation’s lumbering telecom monopolies to affix a sort of “nutrition label” on to broadband connections. The labels will clearly disclose the speed and latency (ping) of your connection, any hidden fees users will encounter, and whether the connection comes with usage limits.
The FCC provided this example of what the label will look like:
The FCC has toyed with this idea for years, but the effort could never quite get over the hump due to lobbying from telecom giants not particularly keen on transparency (if you weren’t aware, the telecom and cable industry has been ripping you off with bogus fees for decades with tacit U.S. regulator approval). That changed with the passage of the The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which mandated these new labels.
The effort still needs to be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget under the Paperwork Reduction Act. And the FCC (short staffed due to GOP and industry attacks on FCC nominee Gigi Sohn) still lacks the voting majority to meaningfully implement any additional changes or potentially hold ISPs accountable should they play fast and loose with the labels. So this is all somewhat… aspirational.
While it’s great the FCC is demanding more transparency from monopolies that are busy ripping people off, it’s not doing much of anything to address the actual monopolies. You’d be hard-pressed to find FCC Commissioners from either party who’ve publicly even acknowledged that telecom monopolies exist or are a problem anytime in the last six years, much less pushed policies that address the issue.
What you get instead is a lot of nebulous, politically safe rhetoric about the “digital divide.” But no honest acknowledgement from the folks in power why this divide still exists in 2022 despite billions upon billions in government subsidies, tax breaks, merger approvals, and regulatory favors — all of which you were told repeatedly by industry were supposed to usher in the golden age of uniform, affordable broadband.
Yes, we’re about to spend $50 billion on broadband courtesy of the infrastructure bill and COVID relief. But telecom giants are working overtime to ensure the lion’s share of this money goes to their (mysteriously perpetually unfinished) efforts to “bridge the digital divide” and not to meaningful competitors within their existing footprints. Having an expert telecom consumer protection regulator that cares about protecting markets, consumers, and competitors from monopoly power still matters.
At the moment, telecom policy is generally ignored due to a myopic focus on “Big Tech.” What telecom policy does exist generally involves Republicans all but lobotomizing telecom oversight, and Democrats throwing an endless number of band-aids at the problems caused by mindless consolidation and monopolization (net neutrality! temporary discounts for poor people! nutrition labels!).
But very few people in DC have the political courage to attack or even acknowledge the real problem (monopolies) at its root. Being transparently informed you’re being ripped off is fine. Actually stopping monopolies from ripping consumers off via policies that encourage creative competition would be better.
Filed Under: broadband labels, digital divide, fcc, fees, fiber, high speed internet, labels, telecom, transparency, usage caps, wireless
Comments on “FCC Adds A ‘Nutrition’ Label To Broadband So You Can Clearly See When Monopolies Are Ripping You Off”
Getting people the details of how they are being ripped off is not equivalent to enforced regulation to stop the ripoff.
Re:
True, but it isn’t a bad start, especially with unpopular companies like telcoms.
The FCC might want to hire someone who knows how metric prefixes work. 1 Ms is 11.5 days, which would be terrible latency even to Pluto.
It’s also absurd to suggest that a monthly price might not require a contract. Payment in exchange for services is the very definition of such.
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The label isn’t talking about just any contract. It’s a talking about a contract with a specific term (i.e. [x year/x month]) instead of just being able to cancel whenever you want.
Re: Re:
It’s trying and failing to talk about that. The suggested (mandated?) text, assuming no set term, is “This Monthly Price does not require a contract.” Apart from being wrong, it’s not as clear as simply writing something like “You can cancel the service at any time, without penalty [, by providing X days/months notice].” (A non-native speaker, for example, might look up “contract” without getting the intended definition.)
Additionally, “Government Taxes: Varies by Location” is a cop-out, and the ISP should be required to provide a label with the exact amount once a (would-be) customer’s location is known. And charging based on “usage” should be forbidden, or at least highly regulated, to ensure no unrequested datagrams can count as usage. (Nevermind that it’s 2022, and “gigabyte” as a unit of data transferred should be a thing of the past.)
Speeds according to...?
The use of the word “typical” in the section on speeds is problematic unless highly specific and very strictly defined. Otherwise, they can just say that whatever speeds the CEO gets are “typical” for their users.
We need a law that says if you’re selling something, the price you advertise has to be the actual price the consumer would pay after adding in any mandatory fees.
I would like the low salt version, please
I don't understand the point of this labeling
This kind of labeling is like the nutrition facts on a candy bar: yes, you know the statistics aren’t good, but it doesn’t matter if it’s your only choice to eat.
And so what happens if this label says Comcast charges $100 month for a 100Mps connection? It’s not like people can switch to another company because of the enforced monopolies. I suppose people could file a complaint about the high price/ low quality service, but it’s not regulators are going to do anything.
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But it’s kind of telling, isn’t it, that the big ISPs fought so hard against this. They seem to think it will harm them somehow, and I’m certainly in favor of harming Comcast, even if the FCC should be doing more. In my opinion, they should be forcing separation between last-mile infrastructure providers and retail ISPs. (A bit like the original Bell breakup; one mistake there was letting the incumbents keep selling retail service.)
Inclusive "Monthly Price"?
What I really want to know is whether the top “Monthly Price” is inclusive of all of the sleazy fees and additional costs, or if those will only be listed down below in multiple entries. Many people will only look at that top number; if it doesn’t include all of the fees, then this still sucks.
Just wondering
Has Karl Bode ever managed an article that he didn’t devalue with his hardline politics?
Some how he always manages to turn a five or ten sentence newsworthy piece Into some sort of political attack advert.
Interesting he leaves out government mandated crap that raises fees. Like mandatory carry of broadcast that adds retransmission fees.
These labels aren’t going to change prices. What we need is mandatory per channel options. Per channel allows users choice, not useless pricing. It also must compete with streaming.
Nobody is going to pay the average $20 cost of broadcast stations when the same stations are streaming plus-extra for half that.
These labels are nice to look at but do nothing to solve real problems.