The rule took effect in April 2024 after the FCC rejected ISPs’ complaints that listing every fee they created would be too difficult. The rule applies specifically to recurring monthly fees “that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.”
ISPs could comply with the rule either by listing the fees or by dropping the fees altogether and, if they choose, raising their overall prices by a corresponding amount. But the latter option wouldn’t fit with the strategy of enticing customers with a low advertised price and hitting them with the real price on their monthly bills. The broadband price label rules were created to stop ISPs from advertising misleadingly low prices.
actually the rule to list them all was because of all the fees. this is one of those good things we had under biden that is going away.
ISPs said listing fees was too hard
Only in America. What a shit country!!!
The laughing stock of the civilized world. 🤣🤣🤣
- American ISP’sDid you expect them to admit that they just wanted to arbitrarily charge more money with zero oversight or transparency?
Can I just mock them without wanting anything else?
I mean sure, just as long as you know they’re full of shit
Wait, they’re full of shit? I don’t believe you!
I know it’s hard to believe, but corporate scumbags lie.
But lying is wrong and bad, it’s badong!
You say that like any American doesn’t know the actual reason they don’t want to list the fees
It’s not that we don’t know - it’s that we are seemingly powerless to do anything about it. You can’t sue, they’re in legal compliance. You can’t take your money elsewhere, because ISPs often have monopolies in their areas of operation. You can’t count on your reps to regulate, because both parties work tirelessly to install pro-corporate establishment figures at all levels of government. You’re not even allowed to crowd source bribe money for said politicians, because they’ll claim you aren’t a legitimate lobby if you represent the people instead of a special interest.
For a country that loves to bleat on about rejecting tyranny, we certainly seem to welcome it with zero resistance in nearly all facets of life. Capitalism has completely failed us, and I think it’s probably humorous to those on the outside because most Americans refuse to admit it despite the glaringly obvious problems we’re now faced with.
Exactly, Democracy didn’t fail USA, but Americans failed democracy.
Now that they don’t have to comply with onerous regulations, cable companies will be able to pass the savings on to their customers.
the importance of local, community run mesh networks is growing by the day. We need to make this the norm going into the 2030s.
Disclosing things is too hard for ultra profitable economic parasites. :(
https://www.investors.com/news/trump-earnings-reports-six-months/
Anything to be able to blow the bubble a bit bigger I guess?
Outside of AI, it’s already shrinking
They all just don’t want to be the first company to admit how bad things are
shrinking bubble isn’t that terrible, a bubble that bursts is.
Oh no, it’s really bad when things are shrinking outside the bubble
When the housing market collapses, investors can move money into stocks, bonds, alternate forms of debt, or even just liquid currency
When everything else is falling and the bubble pops, the money is going to go overseas, which is just going to make the pop bigger
As someone long accustomed to ISP bills that say little more than “you owe us $60 this month for 1 Internet” I’m finding it hard to imagine what is going on over there.
Over here it’s “you owe us $55 for 1 Internet, another $10 for your modem rental, $5 distribution fees, $9 local surcharge and $10 e-bill fee”. (Note there there is also a $12 paper bill fee if you don’t want the e-bill)
Don’t forget the $3 “governance” fee (not from the government), the $5 “line maintenance” fee, the $7 “I’m sure there was a reason for this one but we forgot” fee, and the $50 “fuck you we have a monopoly on this apartment what are you gonna do about it” fee.
don’t forget the ‘there will be an additional $7.50 used anal probe flavored fee beginning next month’
And I suppose your electric bill doesn’t have a “transport fee” that’s two to three times the amount you pay for the electricity you actually use.
nope. but we have an ‘account charge’ per meter, as well as a ‘cost adjustment’ that has never adjusted lower.
we’ve also had charges for meter replacements we never asked for or needed… not like the old spinny dial ones were broken. or the first digital one they put in… or the second. or the… i’m on my fifth meter in 25 years.
once FCC kills the requirement, there will be a new undisclosed fee called “the FCC made us go do all this for nothing” fee.
…or so I think. win-win
comcast is the first to spearheaded the fees movement
I wonder if this is part of the reason why Cox stopped listing their small business plans and prices online.
And then there’s the “promotional discount” that expires after a year or two, requiring you to call back in and threaten to cancel your service before they’ll give you back the same price you were already paying. It helps if you actually have other ISP options.
I also think you should not be allowed to abandon your copper infrastructure without offering a replacement. AT&T refuses to offer new DSL service even if they have an old POTS line connected to your house because “we don’t do DSL anymore” but I guarantee they would have a problem with it if I ripped their pedistal out of my front yard.
I wonder if this is part of the reason why Cox stopped listing their small business plans and prices online. And then there’s the “promotional discount” that expires after a year or two, requiring you to call back in and threaten to cancel your service before they’ll give you back the same price you were already paying. It helps if you actually have other ISP options.
Can confirm that’s by design, AT&T employs the exact same strategy with their business customers and forcing them into “All-for-less” bundle package.
Need a POTS line? $95 + taxes and fees per month, local service only, call features extra.
But get a POTS line and a $15 a month 250mb data plan on a tablet? Suddenly the POTS lime is $30 including long distance and all call features you normally take for granted included (call waiting, call forwarding, etc).
Of course, that price is guaranteed for a year and you’ll have to call billing (sales) to get it sorted out again.
We’ve let ISP’s get away with murder in the U.S.
In my area, once T-Mobile became a viable option as a home ISP, Spectrum freaked the fuck out and went nuts chasing people down at the grocery stores and telling people T-Mobile is bad. Spectrum was the only option in town for a very long time, so they got very expensive, and now T-Mobile is offering 5 times the speed for half the price. It’s insane. Yeah, T-Mobile isn’t perfect, but it’s nice to finally have some competition.
Cox is a piece of shit company and would most definitely fuck over their customers asap.
we used to have a phrase in the DSL support world when customers would threaten to go to Cox, “Go suck Cox, you’ll be back.”
“Does that mean there’s no longer a fee to pay the fees?”
“No, we just don’t tell you about the fee fee.”
Michael Jackson tribute rep: “the fee fee, hee hee”
Do Americans pay specific fees for different internet usages?
I thought it was like everywhere else, ok we give 100/100 internet and you pay us 30 moneys every month, done.
ISPs like to offer, say $65 for service (without committing to a specific speed… Their 100/100 service is “up to 100Mbps” and not a guarantee.)
They then want to charge a modem rental fee - another $5/mo. They want to charge a wifi access point rental fee - another $5/mo. They want to charge various regulatory fees, universal access fees, taxes, etc. They want their advertisements to say “$65/mo”, but they want to collect more like $90/mo.
You can buy your own modem and save that $5/mo (but they often push back against that, claiming your modem isn’t compatible, or that other customers have complained about inferior service with that modem). You can use your own wifi AP and save that $5/mo (but again, they discourage it…) You can’t get away from the regulatory fees.
USA are completely insane.
Although sometimes you get lucky and the tech support person actually admits that their routers are absolute garbage and while they won’t necessarily say “you should buy your own”, they don’t fight you and subtly encourage you when you say you plan to do just that.
Frontier tried to give us a dual band, single antenna router. 2.5ghz and 5ghz using the same antenna that just alternates between both networks constantly. The vast majority of my smart devices refused to connect because they need constant 2.4ghz network, not some laggy inconsistent psuedo dual network. Argued with the first tech support person trying to get them to understand that I physically could not use that router until they sent me to someone higher who admitted the routers were useless junk. Oh, and the settings could only be accessed by a web portal with limited functionality. The VAST majority of the features were locked behind customer service and having someone else do it for you. And of course their routers had a built in “free Wi-Fi for all our customers” hotspot set up so you were paying to extend THEIR network as well.
Now I have a “gaming” router with 3 antennas that I have complete control over and all of my devices are happy.
Hah!
How else do you think that US ISPs screw over their customers? I mean, poor guys! Do we really want them to stop cheating now?
fee for the cable guy to climb to 4th floor
