FCC Finally Tells ISPs to Clearly List Speeds, Costs at Point of Sale

It’s common practice for ISPs to describe their services in grandiose marketing terms, promoting the most impressive metrics like download speed while glossing over data caps, administrative fees, promotional rates, and slow upload speeds (looking at you, Comcast). The broadband labels will include speeds, data caps, pricing, promotional terms, and an itemized price. This will help consumers easily compare different plans from the same or different ISPs. And because the rules will apply to both fixed and wireless broadband, you’ll get the same information for traditional cable and fiber internet plans, as well as newer 5G wireless and satellite connections.

For the most part, the FCC is not forcing ISPs to make new information available — you can find out all the specifics if you know where to look. However, ISPs don’t make it easy, often burying these important disclosures deep in the terms and conditions or support pages. “For over 25 years, consumers have enjoyed the convenience of nutrition labels on food products. We’re now requiring internet service providers to display broadband labels for both wireless and wired services,” says FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel.

ISPs will have to display the labels at the point of sale, ensuring consumers can easily access this information before signing up for service. The labels have to be presented near the corresponding plan, and they are not permitted to hide them behind multiple clicks. Even after you sign up, the FCC will require ISPs to make the info labels available in your account portal. The standardized layout will also make the content machine-readable, allowing third parties to create tools that scrape the disclosures for easier comparison.

The labels aren’t going to start appearing immediately — the FCC still has to do some regulatory legwork to get the rules in place. Once that’s done, it will announce an effective date for ISPs to comply with the new labeling requirement.

Continue reading

Starlink Beta Speed Tests Put Traditional Satellite Internet to Shame

According to data from Ookla Speedtest and analyzed by our colleagues at PCMag, Starlink is living up to its lofty speed claims.

Western Digital Changes Its Reported Drive Speeds to Reflect Reality

Western Digital has launched new WD Red Plus models to correct previous communicated inaccuracies regarding the spindle speeds on its 8TB-14TB products in this family.

How to Boost Your Wi-Fi Speed by Choosing the Right Channel

Some channels in Wi-Fi routers are indeed much faster — but that doesn't mean you should go ahead and change them. Read on to find out more about interference and the massive difference between 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi.

Samsung Stuffs 1.2TFLOP AI Processor Into HBM2 to Boost Efficiency, Speed

Samsung has developed a new type of processor-in-memory, built around HBM2. It's a new achievement for AI offloading and could boost performance by up to 2x while cutting power consumption 71 percent.