Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
After countless years pondering the idea, the FCC in 2022 announced that it would start politely asking the nation’s lumbering telecom monopolies to affix a sort of “nutrition label” on to broadband connections. The labels will clearly disclose the speed and latency (ping) of your connection, any hidden fees users will encounter, and whether the connection comes with usage caps or “overage fees.”
Initially just a voluntary measure, bigger ISPs had to start using the labels back in April. Smaller ISPs had to start using them as of October 10. In most instances they’re supposed to look something like this [image].
As far as regulatory efforts go, it’s not the worst idea. Transparency is lacking in broadband land, and U.S. broadband and cable companies have a 30+ year history of ripping off consumers with an absolute cavalcade of weird restrictions, fees, surcharges, and connection limitations.
Here’s the thing though: transparently knowing you’re being ripped off doesn’t necessarily stop you from being ripped off. A huge number of Americans live under a broadband monopoly or duopoly, meaning they have no other choice in broadband access. As such, Comcast or AT&T or Verizon can rip you off, and you have absolutely no alternative options that allow you to vote with your wallet.
That wouldn’t be as much of a problem if U.S. federal regulators had any interest in reining in regional telecom monopoly power, but they don’t. In fact, members of both parties are historically incapable of even admitting monopoly harm exists. Democrats are notably better at at least trying to do something, even if that something often winds up being decorative regulatory theater.
The other problem: with the help of a corrupt Supreme Court, telecoms and their Republican and libertarian besties are currently engaged in an effort to dismantle what’s left of the FCC’s consumer protection authority under the pretense this unleashes “free market innovation.” It, of course, doesn’t; regional monopolies like Comcast just double down on all of their worst impulses, unchecked.
If successful, even fairly basic efforts like this one won’t be spared, as the FCC won’t have the authority to enforce much of anything.
It’s all very demonstrative of a U.S. telecom industry that’s been broken by monopoly power, a lack of competition, and regulatory capture. As a result, even the most basic attempts at consumer protection are constantly undermined by folks who’ve dressed up greed as some elaborate and intellectual ethos.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by lentilla on Thursday October 31, @03:35AM (6 children)
A possibly more complete solution would be to require ISPs to register their "plans" with the FCC. Require the same information, plus the ZIP codes where the plan might be offered, an estimated number of potential customers and the date from which the plan is offered. In return the ISP gets a "plan number" which is required to be used in advertising.
Comparison shopping suddenly becomes a whole lot easier. One can compare plans via plan numbers, or search by ZIP code.
Furthermore, since the "plan number" would appear on the bill, identifying anomalous charges would suddenly become greatly simplified. Not to mention having clear cut grounds for a "please explain these charges on this plan number".
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Thursday October 31, @04:12AM (5 children)
I think they already sort of did that [fcc.gov] to qualify for subsidies. You can search for an address, and see what various ISPs are claiming to provide for Internet access and cellular phone service in terms of availability and speed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Thursday October 31, @12:33PM (4 children)
Now we just need pass/fail testing. If they claim your zip-code and cannot provide that level of service to you, they must spend up to 10 million dollars to meet the spec. That figure might seem high, but anything less and they'll just call it a small price of doing business and pas it on to consumers. The figure HAS to be ruinous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Thursday October 31, @02:22PM
Even just moving to a ZIP+4 would greatly cut down on that sort of shenanigans.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday October 31, @02:57PM (1 child)
See that's the problem with "the system" right now, its not that it has too much regulation or too little regulation, its that every service is regulated differently and apparently at least ONE customer doesn't realize that's already contract law in most municipalities, it doesn't have to be federal law to exist because it probably already exists in your muni contract with the cable company.
Look for a part of the cable service contract, probably named something like "Rate Discrimination Prohibited" where it probably defines they have to publish a max connection fee and they CAN charge less for promotional reasons but they cannot charge a penny more for any resident of the muni to connect. Now every municipality in the country has a different contract, although almost all have something like that line. And, sure, maybe a corrupt city could approve a maximum connection charge of $10M and waive it down to $19.95 for everyone except someone the mayor has a personal grudge against.
The cableco is permitted to be a-holes but the contract usually has a punishment for that in a section titled "remedies for franchise violations" or "franchise recovation process" and sometimes the written contract CAN be pretty brutal to the cableco. Sure, not $10M but if your profit margin is not much and the penalty might be up to $100 per violation per day they have to sell a lot of ESPN to make the profit to pay the fee. Again, if the city is hopelessly corrupt or the company is hopelessly corrupt maybe this "accidentally" was not included in the most recent contract.
Usually municipal contracts have a line like "Grantee will provide services to any person within the franchise area" or similar phrasing. Its a legal document so there will be various disclaimers about "up to 90 days to provide service to new construction areas or areas newly annexed by the city" etc.
As with most legal things, people generally have more rights than they're willing to demand. But demanding a contract have a clause written into it that's probably been in the contract since 1985 is not going to improve life for the citizens. You can try to get federal laws passed etc, probably wont happen and probably won't help, but its remarkable how big of a fire can be lit if a documented complaint is presented at a city common council meeting. Admittedly the CCC probably doesn't give a single F about an individual resident but I guarantee at contract renegotiation time that problem will be cited as a reason the city "has to" demand an extra 0.1% of revenue kickback or whatever.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 01, @03:36AM
There DOES need to be a new law. I have personally witnessed a case where my zip code was supposedly covered but when I called, they said "sorry you're not covered". So no contract existed. So that's a fail on the pass/fail test.
Translating what they generally offer to old school terms, no commit, burstable to X.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 01, @03:34AM
They'll just reduce the capability you're officially "offered".
That's what CenturyLink did to me. Instead of fixing their crappy antique hardware, they unilaterally downgraded my plan, so I "have nothing to complain of" because at least when =they= test it, it meets the "3Mbps" (not a typo) that's on their version of the official capacity.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.