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FCC's 'Nutrition Labels' For Broadband Show Speed, Caps, and Hidden Fees (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica article: The Federal Communications Commission today unveiled new broadband labels modeled after the nutrition labels commonly seen on food products. Home Internet service providers and mobile carriers are being urged to use the labels to give consumers details such as prices (including hidden fees tacked onto the base price), data caps, overage charges, speed, latency, packet loss, and so on. ISPs aren't required to use these labels. But they are required to make more specific disclosures as part of transparency requirements in the FCC's net neutrality order, which reclassified Internet providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC recommends that ISPs use these labels to comply with the disclosure rules and says use of the labels will act as a "safe harbor" for demonstrating compliance. However, ISPs can come up with their own format if they still make all the required disclosures in "an accurate, understandable, and easy-to-find manner," the FCC said today.
It says it guarantees Safe Harbor if they use the FCC format. What they will likely do is adopt the format and then try to weasel the information actually included and then claim Safe Harbor.
Making it a "suggestion" and offering the carrot of Safe Harbor is about avoiding being instantly sued for issuing a mandate that the carriers don't want them to have the right to give in the first place.
I'm pretty sure they're already being sued in as many ways as possible to stop their having any authority in the first place, I vaguely remember reading something about it.
It seems fairly clever to me I just hope the FCC is ready for the manipulative ways it will be implemented (which will obviously be in as useless a way as possible by the carriers).