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Last week, the United States Federal Communications Commission launched an initiative to simplify online shopping. Internet providers are now required to display tags with the key ingredients of your plans: borrow the nutritional label format of food products.
“People have been pushing for this to happen for years because companies were making it very difficult to know exactly what you’re getting. You sign up for something for $50 a month, and then after taxes and fees, it’s $100, and then that it shoots up to $200,” Justin Brookman, director of technology policy at Consumer Reports, told CNET. “That was a big problem. And that’s why the cable companies largely resisted this for 10 years.”
internet providers They are known for their complicated pricing structures. Between discounts for automatic payment, introductory prices and hidden charges, you often don’t know what your bill will be like until it’s too late. I write about the Internet for a living and even have to call providers directly to get basic information like upload speeds and price increases. That’s the kind of confusion the FCC seeks to clear up.
“The fundamental idea is that competitive markets work better when consumers have the right information,” Blair Levin, former FCC chief of staff and telecommunications industry analyst at New Street Research, told CNET. “Requiring ISPs to provide this kind of minimum level of information to consumers is really a no-brainer.”
A sample of the FCC’s broadband consumption labels for mobile broadband and home Internet plans.
What you’ll see on broadband labels
The FCC requires Internet providers with more than 100,000 subscribers to start displaying the labels now. Smaller providers have until October 10 to implement them.
“Broadband labels must appear at the point of sale,” Alejandro Roark, head of the FCC’s Office of Governmental and Consumer Affairs, told CNET. “And you can’t bury it. It may not be one of those things where the price is available, but you have to click on several links or click on this little icon that can be hard to miss. “We are very explicit in our rules that they must be present.”
Monthly price
At the top of the sticker is the monthly price, along with any increases you can expect. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of being an Internet customer: your bill can double after a year or two, and you won’t know it until it happens. You can sometimes find out what your price increase will be by checking the fine print, but many ISPs simply say you’ll revert to the “then-current rate” after the promotional price expires.
The broadband label seeks to take the surprise out of that process by requiring providers to clearly state how long the introductory price lasts and what will happen when it ends.
That said, at this point it’s better in theory than in practice. I looked at some of the major internet providers and almost none of them met the FCC’s vision.
Spectrum (left) and Frontier (right) announced prices that did not appear on their broadband labels.
Spectrum, for example, lists the price of its Internet 100 plan at $30 per month for 24 months. But when you open the broadband label, it shows the monthly price of $60, with no introductory fee. Frontier had the same problem: It advertised a $30 per month price for its Fiber 200 plan, but showed $40 on the broadband label.
Additional charges
This is where you will see all the fees associated with the Internet plan. Most of that will be equipment rates, which can be broken down into different modem and router rental prices. If applicable, you may also see things like setup and early termination fees here.
But these can also be misleading. Spectrum, for example, shows an installation fee of $30 to $65 on all of its labels, but when you go to pay, the installation is listed as free.
Discounts and packages
This section was almost exactly the same for every ISP I looked at. You’ll be directed to a link that has more information about the discounts you can get if you add things like cell phone or TV service to your internet plan.
Speeds
Three factors are listed here: typical download speed, typical upload speed, and latency. Roark told me that Internet providers are responsible for reporting this information themselves and that the FCC is not reviewing its accuracy.
The speed information I saw varies from provider to provider and in some cases raises more questions than answers. Spectrum lists its Internet 100 plan as “up to 100 Mbps,” for example, but its label says typical download speeds are “100 Mbps or more.”
AT&T Fiber, on the other hand, lists typical download speeds of 398 Mbps and upload speeds of 381.7 Mbps for its 300 Mbps plan. AT&T told CNET that these numbers are pulled from an internal tool.
Data included
Data caps are a thing of the past with most internet plans, but providers that still have them must list exactly what they are, along with the fees you’ll be charged for going over them. You’ll be charged based on how much additional data you use: typically $10 or $15 for every 50GB of data you go over.
Legal information and customer service
The remaining sections are reserved primarily for legal notices. You can click the links to learn more about the ISP’s network administration and privacy policies (if that’s your idea of a good time).
There is also a customer service location, which included a phone number on every label I saw. This is more important than you might think: ISPs often make your contact information surprisingly difficult to track.
How will broadband labels be enforced?
Internet providers are not required to submit labels to the FCC for approval before displaying them on their sites. The agency relies heavily on third-party advocacy groups and consumers themselves to ensure that the information displayed on broadband labels is accurate.
“Similar to many of the agency’s enforcement actions, we really rely on the consumer complaint process,” Roark said. “Now that the rules are officially in effect, we will monitor and ensure there is a broad nationwide awareness campaign so consumers know about this requirement and what to expect on labels.”
If you notice that a provider is not displaying labels or has inaccurate information about their plans, you can file a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center.
The bottom line
Broadband consumer labels are a much-needed step to eliminate some of the confusion in online shopping. But while ISPs technically could have them on their sites (and many still don’t), the information on the labels often directly conflicts with what is advertised on the same page. There’s still a long way to go to make plan comparison easy for consumers, but that’s to be expected from Day 1.
“I hope the FCC reviews this every two, every four years, gets feedback from the industry, gets feedback from consumers, and gradually improves this,” Levin told CNET. “That should be something achievable. That should be one of the FCC’s main tasks.”
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