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ISP Disclosures About Data Caps and Fees Eliminated By Net Neutrality Repeal (arstechnica.com)
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission forced ISPs to be more transparent with customers about hidden fees and the consequences of exceeding data caps. Since the requirements were part of the net neutrality rules, they will be eliminated when the FCC votes to repeal the rules next week. Ars Technica reports: While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is proposing to keep some of the commission's existing disclosure rules and to impose some new disclosure requirements, ISPs won't have to tell consumers exactly what everything will cost when they sign up for service. There have been two major versions of the FCC's transparency requirements: one created in 2010 with the first net neutrality rules, and an expanded version created in 2015. Both sets of transparency rules survived court challenges from the broadband industry. The 2010 requirement had ISPs disclose pricing, including "monthly prices, usage-based fees, and fees for early termination or additional network services." That somewhat vague requirement will survive Pai's net neutrality repeal. But Pai is proposing to eliminate the enhanced disclosure requirements that have been in place since 2015. Here are the disclosures that ISPs currently have to make -- but won't have to after the repeal:
-Price: the full monthly service charge. Any promotional rates should be clearly noted as such, specify the duration of the promotional period and the full monthly service charge the consumer will incur after the expiration of the promotional period.
-Other Fees: all additional one time and/or recurring fees and/or surcharges the consumer may incur either to initiate, maintain, or discontinue service, including the name, definition, and cost of each additional fee. These may include modem rental fees, installation fees, service charges, and early termination fees, among others.
-Data Caps and Allowances: any data caps or allowances that are a part of the plan the consumer is purchasing, as well as the consequences of exceeding the cap or allowance (e.g., additional charges, loss of service for the remainder of the billing cycle).
Pai's proposed net neutrality repeal says those requirements and others adopted in 2015 are too onerous for ISPs.
-Price: the full monthly service charge. Any promotional rates should be clearly noted as such, specify the duration of the promotional period and the full monthly service charge the consumer will incur after the expiration of the promotional period.
-Other Fees: all additional one time and/or recurring fees and/or surcharges the consumer may incur either to initiate, maintain, or discontinue service, including the name, definition, and cost of each additional fee. These may include modem rental fees, installation fees, service charges, and early termination fees, among others.
-Data Caps and Allowances: any data caps or allowances that are a part of the plan the consumer is purchasing, as well as the consequences of exceeding the cap or allowance (e.g., additional charges, loss of service for the remainder of the billing cycle).
Pai's proposed net neutrality repeal says those requirements and others adopted in 2015 are too onerous for ISPs.
$0.99 / month internet!
(gets bill)
$0.99 Monthly Internet
$9.99 Facebook access fee
$9.99 Google access fee
$19.99 Slashdot access fee
$29.99 Porn access fee
$45.00 $1.00 per gigabyte fee. 45gb used
$9.99 Convenience fee
$5.00 Bill print fee
$5.00 Electronic payment fee
--------
135.94 due now or we cut you off.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
is really a blow-up doll for ISPs.
When someone is obviously using their power to the detriment of the people, how do we get them removed from their position of power?
Yes, I'm sure the ISPs will refuse to squander their newly-increased profits and lower customer prices as a result. This is because we live in Fairy Tale land and not Reality.
What the fuck is this? It's too onerous on ISPs to tell people the price of the product they're buying? HOW THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO CHARGE PEOPLE IF THEY DON'T KNOW THE FUCKING PRICE? And it's too onerous for ISPs to tell people about data limits? REALLY? REALLY?
Here's an idea: when the Democrats inevitably win, for once maybe instead of merely slightly going in the right direction, they actually go further and implement regulations that aren't just fair, but punish ISPs for lobbying for this bullshit.
I mean: ISPs will be:
1. Required to do free peering.
2. Must provide, among other services, a basic FCC specified service at a set price with a fixed installation fee. Initially 1Mbps up/down for $10 a month with a $50 installation fee.
3. Legally obliged to provide service within two weeks of any request in their designated service area, or face fines.
3.1 Local governments specifically allowed by FCC to provide service to customers not any active ISP's service area. 4. Must tier service only by bandwidth and nothing else.
4.1. No data caps or overages. Throttling only allowed to temporarily deal with network congestion and must not lead to worse service than the basic FCC mandated plan.
5. Must not filter any traffic except for security purposes, and those filters should be under the control of the customer.
6. Must allow customer to provide their own equipment, without additional charges.
Yes, they'll howl. Yes, they'll probably donate millions to the GOP. But the Democrats wouldn't just implement this, they'd warn the ISPs that if they lobby the GOP to alleviate them, the vice will be tightened even further when the Democrats get back into power.
The current FCC, thanks to lobbying, is telling ISPs they can hide the truth, hide things they know about. That's not acceptable. We need to go further than simply rolling that back, we need to punish those who ask for it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
really are a backwards nation.
LOL! I hope for your sake that you're the shill you appear to be rather than the tool your statement paints you as. In 10 years people are gonna look at archived records of posts like this as an example of how stupid people were and how their willingness to throw away their own freedom to allow some already fat fat cats make an even quicker buck proved they never deserved it anyway.
That ISPs should have to meet the onerous requirement of stating price up front, just like every country store, gas station, and kid's lemonade stand has managed since forever.
So now being honest to your customers is too hard for ISPs
Pai's proposed net neutrality repeal says those requirements and others adopted in 2015 are too onerous for ISPs.
Too onerous to tell people exactly what they're paying for? If the ISPs can charge you for it, they can list it on the bill. Perhaps consumers should consider it "too onerous" to pay for things that aren't listed.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...increasing a company's ability to manipulate and screw customers increases jobs, choice, and GDP.
Anyone want to defend or deny this view of theirs? Go!...
Table-ized A.I.
I think you overlooked the fact that many Americans have only one choice of ISP. Even if they have two choices, it just becomes a game of ping-pong because they know you have to pick one of them.
Maybe if people start dumping people like Pai for a swim down the Potomac, those leading will understand that it's the masses that have the power and they've been playing in the fire too long.
Plus, they barely compete on prices. Most of them try to gain customers with speeds and promotional pricing that doesn't reflect reality, when speeds are variable for a great many reasons and promotional pricing ends after 6-12 months, leaving customers with bait and switch policies as the norm.
Nah, they wouldn't block traffic altogether, but they would prioritize, say, non-Netflix traffic unless you pay an additional fee (or Netflix does).
"Pai's proposed net neutrality repeal says those requirements and others adopted in 2015 are too onerous for ISPs."
Disclosing the full monthly price is too much of a burden?
Explaining the penalty for exceeding data limits is bothersome?
Fuck you Pai. You're nothing but a corporate shill whore. We should be dismissing you instead of you dismissing common sense.
If they do publish fees or caps then in principle the FTC can hold them to it. Thus all a competitor needs to do is to say that Comcast's average fee is over $100 a month. They can let that be the regining belief or they can publish their own rates.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Seriously, what kind of consumer deserves to know what they are purchasing and for what price. After all, informed consumers can only harm the corporations that make this nation great!
I don't even have a choice. AT&T no longer services my area, not does any other provider. I can barely get a cell signal, not enough to even use data on a smart phone.
Fortunately, I have a DSL account grandfathered in.
No one is going to vote in 3rd party candidates in a wave. It's US or THEM, no one else.
meter compliance laws are needed like gas pumps or do you want to live in GOP land where they don't have a fair meter and can say you pumped 20 GAL in to a car that can only hold about 12-14 GAL so pay up now.
She would be exactly the same thing plus TPP.
The last chance was on the primaries.
Well, ideally, we'd expect Congress to do their job and remove them. Or the President to ask them to resign. But our Founding Fathers expected elected officials to act in good faith, not be corrupt, and yet here we are.
Actually, our Founding Fathers expected the central power to tend to attract the corrupt and corrupt any who arrived not yet corrupt.
That's why they split the government into three parts (with any two in combination able to override the third), complicated the procedures, and put lots of roadblocks in the way of doing things: So it would take a bunch of corrupt officials to get away with anything (and others would have some chance of stopping them).
Jefferson thought we'd have to mash a (violent) revolutionary reset button every couple decades, anyhow. But they wrought better than they knew, and their tell-me-three-times redundant system has tended to self correct. It still had a lot of problems, and hurt a lot of people. But (except for the Civil War) it didn't start seriously and persistently going off the rails until about WW I - 14 decades rather than two.
Want to know why we got tTrump? Because a lot of people got sick of the "deep-state" "two-headed singl- party" "swamp" and he was the biggest monkey wrench they could grab to throw into the machine.
Didn't work the way they, or you, wanted it to? So what else is new? Unintended consequences are the nature of government power.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Check out pages 81-85.
I've been advocated, for years, that the NN issue be pulled from the FCC and dropped in the lap of FTC and DOJ. (I even got a copy of my several-years-old paper on the subject into the hands of an FTC functionary, just after the election last year.)
But I was under the impression that the FTC needed a new congressional authorization to exercise such power.
According to THIS:
- The reason they're currently blocked is that the FCC classed the Internet as a common carrier - and THIS (not the Federal Hands Off the Internet legislation) is what's been holding them off.
- By revoking their claim of jurisdiction (upon which courts have frowned), the FTC is unmuzzled immediately.
I don't see a reference to my paper among the thousands of footnotes. (Fine with me - it was for a composition class, not really for Coming to the Attention of People in High Places (to finish the "live in interesting times" curse). But I could care less if it wasn't what got them going in the right direction (or I didn't get credit if I did have some influence).)
Now to see if this claim on the FCC's part is correct and it works like I hope - and they claim it will. Meanwhile ...
Merry Christmas to me - and to us all.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Base broadband speed will be measure in baud again.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Most of these job killing regulations are unnecessary.
I don't usually cal people shills, I figure that most people are just gullible or something, but this is literally just a talking point. You (and I use the word "you" loosely here, since you're probably a bot) are taking what I hate about C-Span, and bringing it here to Slashdot. Thank you Shill-bot, we obviously weren't meeting our quota of political rhetoric.
The issue is not NN but competition. We have an issue with monopolies because the government... local and state mostly grants exclusive franchise licenses to run cable to no more than two companies typically.
that people presume to be surprised when abusive and monopolistic behavior occurs when you grant companies monopolies is baffling.
You do not have the right to such ignorance. Grant right of way access to poles and conduits for third party last mile ISPs and all this NN stuff becomes irrelevant.
Google is having a hard time running cable. That is how bad and how corrupt these franchise agreements are right now. And if google with all its resources is having a hard time then what chance does anyone else stand?
Open up right of way or shut up. Nothing is going to liberate consumers and users and citizens and people from the oppression of monopolistic forces unless you break the monopolies at their heart. And that heart is the exclusive franchise agreements.
Here some fool will say that such agreements are illegal. De Jura they are... De facto they're the law of the land. Try to run cable and see what I mean. You can't. Only former Bell Companies and TV Cable companies are running last mile cable. This isn't because other people don't want to run cable or can't afford to run cable or because there isn't a market. It is because if you try... you are denied.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So much for the "free market" which only works when you have informed consumers.
Also helps if you have an actual market instead of a single vendor.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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Itâ(TM)s not the KGB, that ended when the Soviet Union collapsed. Itâ(TM)s called the FSB.
It's too onerous to explain the fees, but not too onerous to charge them? How ridiculous is that?
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First, as others have pointed out, 'actual competition' is rare for ISPs. You typically have at most, one phone company and one cable company owning the last mile. Everyone else who wants to run a decent speed / latency connection to your house will lease the last mile from one of these two. When that's 90% of the total price and is subject to so little competition (at most one other competitor), there isn't much the competing ISPs can do.
Second, this assumes no collusion. Most companies are run by people who understand what 'race to the bottom' means and realise that if they cut their profits in half and doubled their customer numbers, they wouldn't make more money. If they cut their profits in half and so did their competitor, then they'd both be making less money. The best strategy for them is to only put their prices down if their competitor does so first.
Third, this assumes that price is the only factor on which they compete. For example, Apple hasn't lowered their iPhone price to compete with cheaper Android phones. Part of the goal of network neutrality is to restrict the number of things on which ISPs can compete: they are all providing access to the same services in the same way, so they can compete either on price, speed, or both.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
America is becoming more and more owned by the corporations, but this isn't anything new started by Trump... It's been going on for a long time, and trump is just continuing the process, just like hillary would have done.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Here's an idea: when the Democrats inevitably win
If. A very big if. Roy Moore is a really big deal. If republicans can stomach a pedophile in their midst, they've obviously tossed the moral compass out the window. This could be a problem. It shows how desperate republicans and their supporters are. Dunno if you watch the news, but actual voters are saying to news folks, they literally would rather have Roy Moore despite his shortcomings over -any- democrat. This casting aside of morals is pretty alarming, and they're taking very effective tactics from Trump's campaign: Wage war against the media. Make it "US vs. THEM!" It's extremely unhealthy for our republic. And unfortunately, it's plucking just the right strings for the right. They could very well use these plays effectively in 2018 to crush the democrats again. We'll see, but after 2016, nothing is inevitable anymore. Nothing is for sure, not even outrage of this level.
Roy Moore is a very important character to watch. If he picks up the seat in Alabama, we're in for a bumpy 2018. And nothing will be for sure until the fat lady sings at the end of the elections in Nov 2018. If Roy loses to Doug, it's a good sign that the left is organized and getting out the vote. They'll need to keep that organization and zest alive for a whole year. Meanwhile, Trump is making all of us very very tired.
But...but...that's only if you live in a shitty place! :-p
Ezekiel 23:20
Most of these job killing regulations are unnecessary. Do they really think people will look at their bill, and the check they write each month, and not understand whether they're paying more than they need to or whether they may be able to get a better deal somewhere else? In reality, most people's bills will DECREASE because ISPs won't need to waste time a manpower collecting and sending this data.
LOL, right, because every time a company saves money, they pass that saving on to the customer! Just like tax cuts trickle down...
By the way, your first sentence gives you away. Calling them "job killing" immediately reveals your agenda and bias.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Slashdot mods are mouthbreathing morons. In markets where there is *actually competition*, companies will lower their rates to gain customers until they can no longer afford to lower their rates.
Does "competitive" really describe the ISP market? I'm not so sure. But even in more competitive markets, lowering prices is only one of a number of courses of action.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
This is what happens when you a shitty smelly indo-chimp in charge of the FCC. Eliminate H-1B visas and send Ajit Pai back to the (literal) shithole he came from.
No, this is what happens when you elect Republicans. And Pai was born in America, but I'm sure that's neither here nor there for you.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Admit seemingly innocuous protocol-- billed at the lowest rate-- to an IP that is happy to re-assemble it all back into something useful if taxed by the ISP or its minions.
The teachings of ways to get around the Great Firewall of China have taught people many meaningful dodges. It's a game of Whack-a-Mole at best, where the amount of rules changes becomes so administratively expensive-- even with software defined routing-- that it's not worth their while to do so.
If the ISPs were interested in conserving their traffic, they'd have null-routed all of the botnets of their customers long ago. This isn't about altruism. This is about shareholder profits, and once those profits decline because of overly-complex servicing algorithms, they'll throw them out. Nothing is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious, is the salient aphorism.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Do you know who hired Ajit Pai to the FCC?
This is not left vs right, it's corrupt party that favor some companies and will help others for money vs corrupt party that favor other companies and will help others for money.
than you think. Our entire system of government was built from the ground up for corruption, specifically to protect the interests of wealthy land owners from the growing population of the cities. The Electoral college is the most famous example of that. In addition to putting a buffer between the people and their president it also put a lot of power in the hands of rural voters and took power away from the cities. The entire Senate was created for the same purpose: To a small number of rural voters could override the cities. This was done to keep the city voters from taxing the wealthy land owner class to pay for their cities.
All the nice stuff you were taught in grade school about our system of government was basically crap. Our entire system was built to give the illusion of democracy without the actual practical consequences of it. It's why policy after policy with overwhelming support gets shot down. That's not just 'politics as usual', that's a fundamental design feature of our political system. It's also easily fixable (parliamentary systems with proportional representation), but good luck with that.
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Buying a service or good is a voluntary transaction unlike Obamacare.
Please shut up with the Libertarian bullshit. Having an Internet connection is a requirement in today's society. Go ahead and try to get a job without an email address. Let them know in the interview that you haven't seen their company website because you don't have Internet at home. See how that works for you and if you end up "volunteering" to join the modern world. And secondly, try going without health insurance, if you think Obamacare is so tyrannical.
Some transactions are voluntary, and some are required to live in society. See if you can learn to tell the difference.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
'No Server' was a common condition on early broadband connections.
It's only recently that home file servers have become popular, and things like Twitch streaming and peer-to-peer gaming have made defining a server complex.
What's with Americas current boner for Russians? Is it because Trumpski has a boner for them and it passes on, or is it more you think it's a magic word to make anything you don't like irrelevant?
Though I don't include Pope Ratzo in this, most Americans have only recently learned that there is a massive industry dedicated to influencing their opinions. Part of that industry belongs to Russian intelligence agencies. That's the part the American public has been told about. Somewhat ironically, they have been told that by other parts of the industry that belong to western media outlets and American intelligence agencies.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
It's called a free market you liberal, left wing commie FUCKS. If you don't like their charges, pick another provider. Jesus christ you people will say and do anything to attack and undermine the effort to make our country recover from liberal excess.
Got into the paint thinner again, didn't you?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The difference would be that the Republican Congress would be fighting everything she did, ideally leading to compromise but in reality leading to deadlock.
For example, Congress would have tried to block the TPP instead of just putting all the shitty parts into NAFTA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It sounds like Mr. Pai wants to make ISP billing resemble health care billing...
It's cute that you think there is a meaningful difference between US and THEM. Blindly supporting a party's candidates like you are suggesting is 99.9% of the reason we are so fucked right now.
I figure if they tried to block or meddle with VPN service, they would get hit with a tidal wave of lawsuits from the army of telecommuters who rely on that service to perform their jobs securely.
The consumer-grade peer-to-peer connection sharing devices have been all but stagnant for about a decade. Maybe it will finally pick up. Again, consumer grade -- not commercial grade. If we start having devices which allow non-professionals share their internet connections as easily (and as safely) as they share family pictures on the social networks, maybe the larger operators will be less compelled to distance their customers.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I mean verizon is actually breaking
"-Data Caps and Allowances: any data caps or allowances that are a part of the plan the consumer is purchasing, as well as the consequences of exceeding the cap or allowance (e.g., additional charges, loss of service for the remainder of the billing cycle). "
At least twice.
They have a cap on their fiber and DSL service but it isn't public they just let you know when you hit it.
They also have a limit on their grandfathered unlimited cellular data plans but have never informed their customers of what that limit is they just let you know with a termination letter if you go over.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Realistically, nobody will be "ok" with a provider who bills Internet at something like "99 cents per month!" and then tacks on itemized fees for using various web sites, making a bill that's really $70 or more. That's a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, if nothing else. (Whether "net neutrality" law dictates a complete explanation of what you're going to be charged -- consumers expect fair advertising and marketing, with fees disclosed.)
The BIGGER issue? I think we're probably approaching the whole thing wrong. A buddy of mine worked for a public utility for years and had the insight to realize that the infrastructure should be separated from the services that run through it.
Just as we let government build and maintain our roads and highways, but let private cars and trucks use them freely? We should consider our coaxial, fiber and copper a similar scenario. The reason we don't see any real competition with ISPs, usually stuck with only 1 or 2 choices for broadband (if that!) is because we don't view the infrastructure as independent from the private businesses selling Internet services.
That's really not fair when the public has paid hundreds of millions in tax dollars for initiatives to help increase broadband deployment (especially to rural areas), and when the telcos were essentially handed 100+ years of copper wire infrastructure built during the era when Ma Bell was a protected monopoly.
While we waste time arguing the pros and cons of net neutrality legislation, we ignore this elephant in the room, to our detriment. We'd be much better off letting Federal government take control over the wired infrastructure itself, but let private businesses have equal access to all of it. That way, our taxes can go to ensuring everyone has good, wired Internet service even in the rural areas where it's not profitable for any private business to bury the cables. But the businesses actually selling you broadband can be free of any govt. regulations over how they choose to price things. Let them compete fair and square, in a market where none of them have an "upper hand" simply because they own some of the cabling to people's doors.
Because it doesn't exist.
its about plain and simple upcoming robbery.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I'm not sure if it counts as an article, but the costs of healthcare really are issues for lots of people. Zachary Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) did a public announcement to bring attention to such: http://www.smbc-comics.com/com...
Buying a service or good is a voluntary transaction unlike Obamacare.
So when you get plastered by a car, the ambulance is going to wait until your health care check clears before delivering you to the hospital, right?
Oh, and they definitely won't operate if you don't have a way to pay, right?
If that's not true, then health care isn't nearly as voluntary a transaction as you make it out to be.
And now that the individual mandate is being removed, expect health care premiums to spike even higher! Yeehaa!
Benghazi was about a youtube video??
Oh my God, are you that intellectually dishonest?
Do you know who hired Ajit Pai to the FCC?
President Obama, under rules that required that he choose a Republican.
But hey, Tom Wheeler used to be a Comcast lobbyist, and he seemed to work against Comcast's interests. Not so much with Pai.
You can't just throw claims out with no sources
Do you even know how the Internet operates in 2017? Or how our current President operates?
No one is held accountable for throwing out unsubstantiated claims.