When it comes to Broadband service, the price you see on a provider’s site is NOT the price you are going to pay. Add in equipment rental, surcharges, fees, taxes, etc. and you are looking at another $10-$20 a month above the listed price. Furthermore, that price may be an introductory rate and then goes way up when the period ends (been there with my ISP). What about speed? Do they throttle your speed (or worse charge a fee) if you exceed your maximum allotted monthly bandwidth? The FCC want to make Broadband speed and pricing more transparent.

As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that President Biden signed into law last year, the FCC is going to require ISPs to display easy-to-read-and-understand labels that show key facts about their products at the point of sale. The new design of these labels will be modeled after the nutrition labels US consumers see on food packaging.

 

FCC

In a statement, FCC Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel said that by requiring the companies to display their rates clearly, the agency is “seeking to end the kind of unexpected fees and junk costs that can get buried in long and mind-numbingly confusing statements of terms and conditions.” As you can see in the FCC’s example above, providers will have to itemize each one-time and monthly fee you’ll have to pay.

There is still some more finalizing that needs to be done on the FCC’s side, but once this is finalized ISPs have 6 to 12-months to comply. No word yet what happens if they fail to comply.

via engadget