In the FCC’s words, these fees “represent costs the provider chooses to pass through to consumers rather than rolling them into the base monthly price.” Ultimately, the fees are part of an ISP’s total cost of doing business and could be reflected in the overall advertised price. But ISPs choose to treat them as separate charges for the purpose of billing consumers.
The burden of listing fees
While ISPs seem to have little difficulty charging the fees when it’s time to issue monthly bills, they complain about the burden of listing all the fees on the broadband price labels. Broadband lobby group USTelecom complained to the FCC that “providers must create and update hundreds of different labels to account for geographic variability and to ensure that their systems properly queue the label specific to the proper location when the customer inputs their address.”
Previous FCC leadership implemented broadband labels in response to a directive from Congress. “Over the last few years, we have learned that when labels become cluttered with unnecessary details, they stop being the quick, easy-to-use shopping tool Congress envisioned,” Carr said at today’s meeting.
In a press release, the FCC said the previous rules resulted in “sometimes-confusing labels that strayed beyond the statutory framework Congress created, increasing compliance costs for providers in the process.” Carr said the new labels will be simpler but that “providers will still offer a label for every standalone broadband plan” with “necessary information about pricing, introductory rates, broadband speeds, and data allowances. The labels will also remain accessible and available in the languages providers use to market their services.”
Another change made today will let ISPs have their customer service reps “discuss the label conversationally over the phone, rather than reading it to consumers verbatim,” the FCC said. Gomez said phone calls remain an important point of sale, particularly for people who don’t currently have broadband service. She said the updated rules “require that critical information is conveyed over the phone, including the monthly price, inclusive of any monthly fees, the introductory rate and its duration, typical download and upload speeds, latency, data allowance, contract term, and early termination fees.”
