OTI Opposes FCC Plan to Roll Back Rules That Make Internet Service Offerings More Accessible and Informative

WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) vote to begin eliminating requirements that make the Broadband “Nutrition Labels,” which internet service providers are required to display, more accessible and informative, the Open Technology Institute (OTI), a New America program fostering equitable access to digital technology and its benefits, issued the following statement from Raza Panjwani, an OTI senior policy counsel.

It’s one thing for the FCC to talk about the free market and competition—it’s another for them to strip consumers of one of the few tools they have to navigate it.

Consumers should be able to quickly, clearly, and consistently compare internet service offerings and understand the terms of the service they subscribe to. The broadband label rule, required by the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and implemented by a unanimous and bipartisan FCC in 2022, is supposed to serve that need.

But today, the FCC has voted to begin undermining the rule, including rolling back requirements to accurately disclose fees, to disclose label information to customers signing up over the phone, to produce the label in each language the provider markets its services in, to display the label online in customer account portals, and to make the label information available in machine-readable formats that can power comparison tools. At no point does this proposal ask how to genuinely improve the labels—it simply cuts straight to requiring less from providers.