The groups urged the FCC to retain machine-readable pricing data, saying it “clearly benefits consumers by facilitating the development of comparison shopping tools and general market research.” The groups also said that “telephone-based disclosures remain important for informed consumer decision-making” because they “serve as an important safeguard against scams and deceptive offers that may reach consumers through mail, email, text messages, fake/fraudulent websites or robocalls.”
ISPs get what they want
Another planned change would eliminate the requirement that providers archive all labels for at least two years after a service plan is no longer available. Communal Reform Network, advocacy group, told the FCC that archived tags provide important information on how prices and services change over time, and that machine-readable tags are essential for affordability research and data acquisition.
The Utility Reform Network also said that itemizing switching charges helps prevent bill shock. Showing an “up to” price instead would “only serve to reduce the effectiveness of the label and increase consumer confusion as to how the final price they pay is calculated,” he said.
Cable and telecom lobby groups submitted comments supporting the FCC’s plan to eliminate or ease various requirements.
“The Commission correctly highlights the complexity and burden that providers must undertake to disclose all “provider discretionary charges, i.e., charges not set by the government,” including pass-through of government-imposed charges,” USTelecom he said. “To comply with this government-imposed fee requirement, providers must create and update hundreds of different tags to account for geographic variation and ensure that their systems correctly queue the location-specific tag when a customer enters their address.”
USTelecom said that requiring machine-readable information is only useful to “third-party researchers who are not the intended beneficiaries of the label” and has “no apparent purpose or benefit other than to third parties seeking access to this information.”
Cable lobby group NCTA, urging the FCC to stop requiring a list of all fees he said “creating and maintaining labels for each combination of government tolls” is cumbersome. The NCTA complained that this rule and others are “unnecessary or ineffective in informing consumers about the services offered by providers and imposes an excessive compliance burden on providers.”
