FCC says “too bad” to ISPs complaining that listing every fee is too hard::Comcast and other ISPs asked FCC to ditch listing-every-fee rule. FCC says “no.”
listing-every-fee rule “impose[s] significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements.”
Then, Mr ISP, you have too many fees or they are too complicated for you to charge.
I don’t see what’s so complicated. Where’s the burden of writing “because we fucking feel like it” on the bill?
Exactly. How can you track payment but not write them down?
Sounds like someone wants to embezzle something.
Research and development costs
My monthly bill PROVES their systems are competent at itemizing EVERY SINGLE POSSIBLE fee and tax and charge.
Them claiming it was too hard always was complete bullshit.
Good. Now ban data caps. Unlike water or electricity, you cannot run out of data.
They don’t cap data because there is a “finite supply of data” they cap it because there is a finite amount of bandwidth.
That being said though, it should still be banned because it isn’t 2005 anymore and the bandwidth we have is absolutely ridiculous.
And the U.S. taxpayers have paid for nationwide broadband several times already.
They aren’t rate limiting bandwidth, but monthly utilization and those are uncoupled values. Besides your plan already limits your bandwidth. The data cap is just an added fee.
there is a finite amount of bandwidth.
And why after saying “you will not get more than 100Mbit/s” they say “also you will not get more than 10Gbit/mo”? It is not just a note about theoretical limit, but actual data cap.
I’m from the Netherlands and remember when we first got internet over the television cable. It was already unlimited use. Well under FUP (fair use policy), meaning that you could get charged when you extremely exceeded the downloaded data average of all other users. I downloaded everything I could get my hand on and never got a charge for it.
Now I have 1gig fiber connection for €60, I would go crazy if I had data caps.
Removed by mod
1gig fiber, London, £25/mo
Same, but before it was available in my area I was stuck with “1gig” cable that was really like .75gig because they only guarantee “up to 1gig” and 700mb is not over “1gig” therefor I’m getting what I paid for (Had this actual conversation with a customer service rep when I requested they send a tech to find out why I NEVER get the advertised speeds and my modem was reporting thousands of errors in the data between it and my provider)… and cost me $120/month with a 1TB data cap, or $170/month for unlimited. Now that the DSL provider in my area ran fiber to my neighborhood, I switched to the unlimited 1gig fiber for $70/month with no hidden fees, rate locked for life, and told my old cable provider to go pound sand while sipping wine and rubbing my nipples.
Many of the ISP’s in the states used to have unlimited caps. This whole data cap bullshit started 10 years ago or so. These same ISP’s will drop the datacap in areas where there is competition. Hate them.
There is also a “finite supply” of clean water and electricity, but during the dawn of the Internet age corporations had more lobbying power than before and were able to stave off real meaningful regulation, now the consumer pays the price. We need to stop giving corporations the same rights as people and revisit the 14th Amendment they stole personhood from, as it wasn’t intended for that purpose. Regardless of what Mitt Romney might think, corporations are not people.
On the one hand I’m sceptical that a company couldn’t tell customers ahead of time what fees they might be paying.
On the other hand, I once worked for an ISP that deleted its customer database and all backups to save itself data warehousing fees and literally had no idea how much customers were paying or what services it was providing them. So it does happen.
On the other other hand (yes, I have three), incompetence shouldn’t shield you from the consequences of failing your responsibilities.
Where are you getting all these hands?
Dad had one of those glow-in-the-dark wrist-watches with the radium dials.
Look down
But I’m afraid of heights
Their ISP was located in Chernobyl.
So…. Wait how did that work? If a customer called in and said they were being overcharged, or that they were paying X for Y and only getting half of Y… what happened?
That’s a very good question and thankfully I wasn’t part of the section who handled issues like those.
Good. That was such a bullshit excuse. It’s literally outputting from a spreadsheet.
The ISPs arguments are bogus, anyway. The claim they don’t know the costs when offering a contract, but suddenly remember each and everything when writing the bill…
If they can’t even give you an itemized bill, they’re making a number up.
My work is making bills out of ISPs’ data. Every kb of mobile data and every call minute is tracked and rated.
What I really want is to know what the “real” price is. Not the 12 month promo price. What’s it gonna cost me when the price goes up? That should be required to be alongside the promo price.
Last time i moved i got cold called by Comcast to sign up for Internet. I asked them the price, they gave some deal. I asked what will be the price in 2 years when the contract was up. “Oh, well that really depends on what services you sign up for.” I tell them i want only Internet at this given speed and i will never sign up for anything else.
…the woman on the phone just stopped talking. I asked can she not tell me the price after all the specials run out and i get my last bill in the contract. She said “i dont know what you want me to say.”
Apparently they dont want people to know how screwed you are with Internet. I told the woman that i was going to write a letter letting them know that her inability to answer a simple question was the reason i was not going with their service. She hung up on me. Sent the letter and i got a call a few weeks later asking ifni wanted a super crazy deal they “never give to anyone.” I asked my question again and they couldn’t tell me my final bill so i hung up and reported the number as spam to my phone carrier.
Stuff like this makes me so glad my town has a local ISP that is competitively priced, works well, and they don’t push any sort of deal on you.
The fun part about that is that before they were available in my area, they let my subdivision know that if 40% of us signed up, they would lay fiber in the whole neighborhood and we could choose them over Spectrum. Suddenly, mysteriously, our Spectrum speeds went from a ridiculous 20mbps to a still not great 80mbs. Can’t imagine why.
Basically the whole neighborhood told Spectrum to fuck off. Now I have over 300mbps and I could get a faster speed if I wanted to pay for it.
If you can charge the fee you can tell me about. Sounds pretty simple.
Yeah this isn’t even the complicated tax spaghetti. It’s just their junk fees.
Based.
They can charge it. It’s in the system. This was always a stall or attrition tactic.
They got away with murder from Trump for so long they got used to it.
And Ajit Pai.
They’ll just make a fee for having to list their fees, and make the consumer pay for it.
It would be pretty bad for their reputation when its bad already.
But consequence? No. We can’t get onto the Internet without them.
You just know that track all of those fees anyways to make sure they bill you for them. Not listing them is just malicious.
don’t charge any fees then you won’t have to change the system. pretty simple.
When I wear my glasses the Ben Franklin in the thumbnail is 3D, when I take them off he’s not anymore.
It’s called Chromostereopsis
Some decent news for a change at least
