Trump FCC Is Making It Easier For Your Broadband ISP To Rip You Off With Bogus Fees
from the dysfunction-junction dept
When FCC boss Brendan Carr isn’t failing embarrassingly to censor comedians who make the President sad, he’s taking a hatchet to corporate oversight and consumer protection. From weakening robocall enforcement to killing net neutrality, it’s part of Carr’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” performance that is attempting to dress up corruption and regulatory capture as streamlined government efficiency.
This week, Carr began taking aim at recently passed rules requiring that your broadband ISP be clear about all the sneaky fees and restrictions they impose on your broadband line. Mandated by the 2021 infrastructure bill, the new FCC rules required that ISPs provide a sort of “nutrition label” at the point of sale for broadband access, itemizing all fees, caps, and other restrictions.
It was ideally supposed to look like this:
These labels began appearing last year. The effort came after decades of incidents where regional monopolies would (falsely) advertise one price, then sock you with a bevy of predatory, misleading fees with nonsensical names like “administrative and telco recovery charge,” or “internet cost recovery fee.”
Now Carr is looking to kill those requirements. Since it was mandated by Congress, Carr can’t gleefully say he’s killing the rule. But Carr has scheduled an October 28 vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that aims to weaken the rules by making it so big ISPs like Comcast no longer have to clearly itemize all their sneaky, shitty fees. The whole point of the effort.
In a blog post (which you should read the first few paragraphs of to appreciate Carr’s “humor”), Carr tries to pass this off as an efficient improvement of consumer protection:
“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.”
Big ISPs like Comcast have repeatedly whined to the FCC about the rule, claiming it’s simply too onerous to have to list all of the bullshit fees they’ve made up to mislead consumers. This despite the fact that the FCC (under either administration) has never bothered to actually enforce the rule, and a recent study found that most ISPs are doing a fairly middling job actually adhering to the requirements.
To be clear: Brendan Carr is coddling the telecom industry so he can get a cushy job after he leaves the agency. But like everything Carr does, this is all dressed up as serious adult policy and an act of efficiency everyone should be grateful for. But it’s clear that after Carr weakens the rules there’s no chance in hell he ever actually enforces them. You’ll never get a post-office telecom think tank job doing that sort of thing.
I criticized the rules when proposed, noting that they were a decorative effort that took aim at the symptom (high prices, consumer aggression) of the real disease (consolidated monopoly power protected by corruption and regulatory capture). Former Biden FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel couldn’t even openly admit that telecom monopolization was a problem, much less propose a fix.
Requiring Comcast to be transparent about the fact they’re ripping you off — while doing nothing about Comcast actually ripping you off — is a performance.
It may have been a well-intentioned performance by Rosenworcel, but it was an example of how U.S. telecom policy is a sad joke. Republicans unabashedly coddle our telecom monopolies, and Democrats propose half-solutions because more than half the party is terrified of upsetting major campaign contributors bone-grafted to our domestic surveillance systems. Anybody who might actually disrupt this dynamic (see: what happened to Gigi Sohn) can’t make it through the corrupt Senate approval process.
The result is a sloppy mess of substandard, overpriced internet access dominated by bad actors in a country that somehow can’t stop talking about how technologically innovative and clever it is.
Filed Under: brendan carr, broadband, broadband label, fcc, fees, jessica rosenworcel, labeling, monopoly, pricing, telecom, transparency
Comments on “Trump FCC Is Making It Easier For Your Broadband ISP To Rip You Off With Bogus Fees”
Meaning, imposing “burdens” (i.e. a game of unless random trial and errors) on customers instead of telcos.
Brendon, you would have been a great comedian. And it’s never too late to start an new carrier.
Re:
I don’t see anything really funny here, except the idea of measuring latency in megaseconds.
In the name of cutting waste it’s laying off people from all federal agencys this includes the experts who work in anti fraud and consumer protection and experts who deal with tax fraud .still that’s fine as big corporations can make more money and pay less tax
Result investors are rushing to buy gold and Bitcoin as the American dollar loses value and American debt is growing
It’s hard to control illegal Corporate pollution or fine company’s for tax fraud when most your staff is laid off
As a side note Ireland is planning to bring in a law to force backdoors in all messaging apps even though this is against eu law on user privacy rights and humans rights legislation
M
This is separate from the proposal for a chat control law proposed by the eu
How exactly would one go about adding an unlisted fee to ISP bills directing a smallish amount to my pocket?
Asking for a friend.
Acronym change
Can we call it what it now is? The Fecal Communication Cult.
Re:
Haha!
Poop.
Re:
The Fucking Clown Committee.
Trump
Has anyone figured out Why trump is Probably doing this stuff?
1 reason is, AS A BUSINESS MAN, I wonder if he forgot to pay INTO Social sec.
And when he passes away, and ALL his goods, are placed on the table. SOME one is going to find out, that he Owns little to Nothing.
Odds say that he Sold off a Big Chunk back in the 80’s to Foreign Investors, and is only a Building manager since. That Chunk sold was PARt of the Payments to Payoff the Mistakes he made. Back then.
It shows Why he has Tax problems.