FCC launches mandatory ‘nutritional labels’ for Internet provider plans | Business CNN

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The next time you buy a home or mobile Internet plan, you’ll see a new label that tells you exactly what you can expect to pay, the typical download speeds you’ll get, and information about the Internet provider’s policies.

That information will now be standardized across suppliers and displayed in a new disclosure based on the nutritional labels seen on food packaging in grocery store aisles, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The new labels, which will be available starting Wednesday and will now be required to be displayed by all major Internet service providers (ISPs), are among the U.S. government’s latest steps to help consumers understand the combination of plans, rates and promotional rates. on the market today.

The transparency the labels provide could help Americans save money, FCC and White House officials say.

“The FCC borrowed the format from the model nutrition label for food products because we wanted basic information about broadband Internet service to be easily recognizable and easy to understand,” Alejandro Roark, head of state, told reporters in a conference call. head of the FCC’s bureau of government and consumer affairs. .

Known as “consumer broadband labels,” FCC-mandated disclosures must be offered at the point of sale both online and in stores and, in many cases, in both English and Spanish.

They will need to include information about early termination fees, data limits, and network practices such as speed throttling. And they will have to be easily accessible: Providers won’t be allowed to bury the labels in fine print or on separate web pages, and consumers will have to be able to conveniently consult them whenever they pay their bills or want to compare plans. Roark said.

In many parts of the country, Americans are still limited to a small number of providers. And in a report last month, the FCC found that tens of millions of Americans still don’t have access to high-speed Internet. The problem is particularly acute in rural and tribal areas, where about a quarter of Americans lack broadband.

Worse yet, an estimated 23 million households (representing nearly 1 in 5 American households and approximately 59 million Americans overall) are at risk of losing their internet plans entirely due to the imminent end of a popular aid program. federal that will run out of money as it progresses. as soon as this month. Without the Affordable Connectivity Program, many will be forced to choose between having Internet at home and paying for food, surveys show.

Still, forcing ISPs to be clearer with consumers could be a small step toward improving competition among Internet providers, and is part of a broader push by the Biden administration to combat junk fees and other business practices. misleading, a White House official said on the call.

“These are mechanisms designed to make it more likely that companies will compete with each other based on consumer price and product quality and less likely to compete with each other on confusing terms or by misleading customers,” the official said.

The labels have been years in the making. In 2016, an FCC advisory committee first published a version of the disclosures that providers were not required to adopt. Then, under the bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021, the FCC took steps to implement mandatory broadband disclosure labels and undertook a lengthy process to design and finalize them.

The end result could give consumers an easier way to compare plans and offers from providers like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. And because the labels must be machine-readable, they could help researchers and product review sites gather data on ISPs’ plans and marketing.

Because providers will be required to prominently display the labels, FCC officials will be monitoring for evidence or consumer complaints of noncompliance, which could lead to agency investigations or fines.

“We’ll be watching to see if there are any issues with the implementation,” an FCC official said on the call.