The groups urged the FCC to preserve machine-readable pricing information, saying it “clearly benefits consumers by assisting in the development of aggregate market research and price comparison tools.” The groups also said that “telephone disclosures remain essential to informed consumer decision-making” because they “serve as an important safeguard against scams and deceptive offers that can reach consumers through mailings, emails, text messages, fake/fraudulent websites, or robocalls.”
ISPs get what they asked for
Another planned change will eliminate the requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. The Utility Reform Network, an advocacy group, told the FCC that archived labels provide crucial data on how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable labels are important for information affordability and accessibility research.
The Utility Reform Network also said breaking down transfer fees helps avoid the impact on bills. Displaying an “up to” price instead “would only serve to dilute the effectiveness of the label and increase consumer confusion about how the final price they pay is calculated,” the group said.
Cable and telecommunications lobby groups submitted comments supporting the FCC’s plan to eliminate or relax several requirements.
“The Commission correctly highlights the complexity and burdens that providers have had to bear in displaying all ‘charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government,’ including pass-through fees imposed by the government,” USTelecom saying. “To comply with this government-imposed fee requirement, providers must create and update hundreds of different labels to account for geographic variability and ensure their systems properly queue the appropriate location-specific label when the customer enters their address.”
USTelecom said requiring machine-readable information is only useful to “third-party researchers who are not the intended beneficiaries of the label” and “has no clear purpose or benefit except to third parties seeking to extract this information.”
Urging FCC to stop requiring listing of all rates, cable lobby group NCTA saying It is cumbersome to “create and maintain labels for each and every combination of government transfer fees.” The NCTA complained that this rule and others “are unnecessary or useless in informing consumers about the services providers offer and impose an enormous compliance burden on providers.”
