The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act revamps broadband labels

There is one quiet provision of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that slipped under the radar. Congress is requiring that the Federal Communications Commission revamp broadband labels that describe the broadband product to customers, similar to the labels for food. The Act gives the FCC one year to create regulations to require the display of a broadband label similar to the ones created by the FCC in 2016. Internet service providers (ISPs) are going to hate this. It requires full disclosure of prices, including any special or gimmick pricing that will expire. ISPs will have to disclose data caps and also any hidden charges. The labels also include other information that big ISPs are not going to want to put into writing, such as the typical download and upload speeds for a broadband product as well as the expected latency and jitter. I’m sure that big ISPs are already scrambling trying to find some way out of this new requirement, but that’s going to be hard to do since the directive comes from Congress. It’s going to get interesting a year from now, and I can’t wait to see the labels published by the biggest ISPs.

[Doug Dawson is owner and president of CCG Consulting.]