FCC to end Biden-era rule that forces ISPs to list all their fees - Ars Technica
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The Federal Communications Commission will vote to eliminate a rule that requires Internet service providers to list all of their so-called “passthrough” fees on an easily accessible broadband price label. The FCC vote could also make the price labels themselves a bit harder for consumers to find.
ISPs routinely advertise prices much lower than those actually charged to consumers on their monthly bills. One method of raising monthly bill prices above advertised rates is to tack on fees that, ISPs claim, are used to offset charges imposed by local governments.
ISPs would be well within their rights to advertise accurate monthly prices and charge those exact prices on monthly bills. But because ISPs rarely do that, the FCC has required them to make specific price disclosures to consumers for the past decade.
The Biden-era FCC updated the broadband-label rules to require that ISPs “itemize on the label all discretionary monthly fees that the provider passes through to the consumer.” The change drew protest from Comcast and other ISPs that complained bitterly about the complexity of listing all the hidden fees they had chosen to charge.
Under Chairman Brendan Carr, the Trump FCC has steadily whittled away at requirements imposed under Democrats. An order released in draft form last week would eliminate the requirement to itemize passthrough fees and let ISPs list them in a single “up to” amount. The “up to” amount can include both government fees and fees charged by non-government entities such as owners of utility poles.
“Rather than continuing to require providers to itemize ‘passthrough fees’ that can vary by location, we allow providers to display such fees in the aggregate, either as a maximum or ‘up to’ amount for the total fees applicable in any location where the service plan is offered, or as the exact total of such fees assessed in a particular location,” the FCC draft order said.
Making price info less accessible
The order to be voted on later this month includes a few other changes that will please ISPs and their lobby groups. ISPs will be allowed to provide links to price labels instead of displaying the full labels prominently on ordering pages and account portals, and will be allowed to stop making the price-label information available in machine-readable spreadsheets.
The FCC is also relaxing the requirement that price information be available over the phone. The FCC said the change will “allow phone sales representatives to present label information conversationally, as a summary of key label fields, rather than require verbatim recitation.”
The changes have been in the works since October 2025, when the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to let the public submit comments on the proposals. The outcome of that process is the draft order, which will be voted on at the FCC’s July 22 meeting and take effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register.
There are many types of passthrough fees that ISPs will be able to stop listing individually and roll into the “up to” amount. The FCC defined the fees as follows, saying they include just about anything that isn’t a tax:
For purposes of this Report and Order, “passthrough fees” are monthly charges that 1) are imposed by a government entity or third-party infrastructure owner rather than set by the provider itself; 2) represent costs the provider chooses to pass through to consumers rather than rolling them into the base monthly price; and 3) vary by consumer location. For example, “passthrough fees” include state and local right-of-way fees, pole attachment fees imposed by third-party pole owners, and similar charges. “Passthrough fees” do not include taxes.
If ISPs wanted to make things simpler for consumers, they could treat these non-tax expenses as the cost of doing business and incorporate them into their advertised monthly prices. The prices consumers ultimately pay might not change if advertised prices were accurate, but it would be easier for regular people to figure out what they’ll pay when they sign up for service.
Junk fees, hidden charges
A planned change mentioned earlier in this article will likely result in fewer consumers seeing the price labels at all. Instead of displaying the full label at the point of sale and in each customer’s account portal, ISPs will be allowed to use hyperlinks to direct potential buyers and current customers to the labels displaying the full price...