FCC to Require ISPs to Post Broadband 'Nutrition Labels'

Broadband internet providers won’t be able to submerge the least palatable parts of their product in fine print under a proposed ruleadvanced Thursday(Opens in a new window)by the FCC. All four commissioners voted to approve writing regulations to requireISPsto surface the parameters of their services in a format modeled after nutrition-facts labels on packaged foods.

“It helps consumers make good choices,”FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcelsaid today of the FDA's label requirement. “The FCC needs to do the same with broadband.”

The commission proposed a voluntary scheme for broadband labelsin 2016, then dropped that initiative under the Trump administration as part of aregulatory retreatthat also saw the FCC scrap pendingbroadband-privacyregulations andsmash the “undo” buttonon net-neutrality rules it had adopted in 2015.

That allowed internet providers to keep customers guessing about such critical details as upload speeds,service ratesafter the first or second year, and the cost torent a modem or gateway. Some reveal those data points toward the end of the sign-up process, while others bury them in disclosure pages that they leave as an exercise for customers to locate on their sites.

For example, the “details” page Comcast shows for a 600Mbps Xfinity cable broadband plan at a Bay Area address does not specify that plan’s15Mbps upload speed(Opens in a new window)or1.2TB data cap(Opens in a new window).

This habitual obscurity can leave even policies as basic asdata capsunclear; a2021 surveyfound that nearly half of respondents didn’t know the limit on their plan.

Broadband labels saw a rebirth under the Biden administration, which included them in thebroadband provisions(Opens in a new window)of its infrastructure bill. Section 60504 of theInfrastructure Investment and Jobs Act(Opens in a new window)requires the FCC to write rules mandating them within a year of that law’s November 2021 enactment.

Thursday’s vote moves that rule-making process forward. The“notice of proposed rulemaking”(Opens in a new window)posted before today's FCC meeting includes a sample label for wired providers that lists:

• the month-to-month rate, including the non-promotional rate;

• the contract rate;

• the data cap, if any, and overage charges associated with it;

• the cost to rent a modem and if customers can bring their own;

• other monthly or one-time fees and any government taxes and fees;

• typical download speeds;

• typical upload speeds;

• typical latency;

• typical packet loss;

• brief descriptions of its network-management practices, both application-specific and those triggered by subscriber actions;

• a link to the provider’s privacy policy;

• the address of the provider’s customer-support page and its customer-support phone number.

The FCC’s proposal also covers wireless broadband services; a longer sample label in the notice provides more room to document speed-based rate plans and link to theirbring-your-own-devicepolicies. It does not, however, have a field in which wireless carriers would be required to describe clearly what flavors of5Gthey provide.