The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to loosen broadband pricing disclosure rules, giving internet providers more room to bury location-specific charges inside a single fee estimate instead of spelling them out line by line.
A draft order released by the FCC under Chairman Brendan Carr would remove a requirement adopted during the Biden administration that providers itemize monthly “passthrough fees” on broadband labels. The commission is scheduled to vote on the order at its July 22 meeting. If adopted, the changes would take effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register.
Broadband labels are the FCC’s attempt to make internet service look a little more like a nutrition label: monthly price, speeds, data limits, extra fees, and other terms in one standardized format. The current rules require providers to list discretionary monthly fees they pass on to customers, rather than folding them into a vague surcharge bucket.
The draft order would let providers show those charges as an aggregate maximum, an “up to” number covering any location where the plan is sold, or as the exact total for a specific address. The FCC said passthrough fees include state and local right-of-way fees, pole attachment fees charged by third-party pole owners, and similar monthly charges. Taxes are excluded.
Labels could become easier to miss
The draft order also would let providers link to broadband labels instead of showing the full labels directly on ordering pages and customer account portals. The FCC acknowledged that using links rather than automatic display “may result in fewer consumers reading the label,” while saying interested customers would still be able to open it.
The agency also plans to end the requirement that providers publish label contents in separate machine-readable spreadsheet files on their websites. Providers would still have to make labels accessible to people with disabilities, including compatibility with screen readers and other assistive tools.
Phone sales rules would also get softer. The FCC said representatives could describe label information conversationally as a summary of key fields, rather than reciting the label verbatim.
Another proposed change would remove the requirement that providers keep archived labels for at least two years after a plan is no longer offered.
Consumer groups warned about hidden charges
Public Knowledge, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, New America’s Open Technology Institute, the National Consumer Law Center, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights urged the FCC in a January 2026 filing not to weaken the rules.
The groups said dropping itemized fee disclosure would reduce pricing transparency and let providers obscure charges they choose to pass on to customers. They compared non-itemized broadband bills to medical bills sent without explanations of medication, facility, or other charges.
The same filing argued that machine-readable label data helps comparison-shopping tools and market research. The groups also said phone disclosures remain a protection against misleading offers delivered through mail, email, texts, scam websites, or robocalls.
The Utility Reform Network told the FCC that archived and machine-readable labels help track changes in prices and services over time. The group also said replacing itemized charges with an “up to” figure would weaken the label and make final bills harder to understand.
Industry groups said compliance is too burdensome
Broadband industry groups supported the rollback. USTelecom told the FCC that providers must create and update hundreds of labels to reflect geographic differences in passthrough fees and ensure the right label appears when a customer enters an address.
USTelecom also argued that machine-readable files mainly help third-party researchers, which it said are not the intended audience for broadband labels.
NCTA, the cable industry lobbying group, said maintaining labels for every combination of government passthrough fees is burdensome. It told the FCC the requirements are unnecessary or unhelpful for consumers and create an outsized compliance load for providers.
The practical result is plain enough: if the order passes, broadband customers may still get standardized price labels, but with less fee detail, fewer automatic displays, and less reusable public data. Providers asked for less paperwork. Customers may get less clarity.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.
