Comcast, AT&T try to kill new requirements to be transparent about their shitty pricing::The 2021 infrastructure bill did some very good things for broadband. Not only did it include a massive, $42 billion investment in broadband deployment and require better mapping, it demanded that the FCC impose a new “nutrition label for broadband,” requiring that ISPs be transparent about all of the weird restrictions, caps, fees, and limitations…

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    231 year ago

    So this isn’t asking them to detail how they arrive at the base monthly cost for your tier of service, it’s asking them to detail all the extra fees? What does an internet bill look like in the US that there are unattributed fees tacked on?

  • @Potatos_are_not_friends
    link
    English
    181 year ago

    This one takes the cake for “absolute stupid defense”.

    We can’t do it because “it’s too hard”. Oh for fox sakes.

    • @emax_gomax
      link
      English
      51 year ago

      If its too hard to communicate it’s probably to hard to implement as well. Let’s just dissolve these cancers on society and provide free Internet services to everyone whose been wrongfully overcharged the last few years.

      • @5BC2E7
        link
        English
        11 year ago

        Indeed if it’s not worth reporting it wasn’t worth charging it in the first place.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    13
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    A few years back I worked for a regional Internet service provider in the northeast US. One day a guy who did finance and regulatory work for us asked me how many of our customer point to point links with A and Z locations in different states were either dedicated to voice traffic or carried more than x percent voice traffic.

    After asking a few thought provoking questions like if the percentage was based on traffic measurements or link capacity and how we would make that calculation on a circuit with asymmetrical speeds, I explained that it would be nearly impossible for us to tell unless the customer declared it to us.

    He then told me that there was some new federal tax on interstate circuits carrying voice traffic and that if we couldn’t tell if a customer circuit was carrying voice traffic or not, that we would just need to start charging them all the tax no matter what. It might even apply to regular Internet services where the edge router and customer site were in different states.

    And that is the story of how the ISP that I worked for added yet another fee to all of its customers.

    • Dark Arc
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Cool, so list it so your customers can complain they’re getting charged for some weird tax.

      This isn’t pertinent, it’s just some anecdotal whataboutism about a tax you (presumably) disagree with.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        11 year ago

        Whether the tax was valid or not I have no input on. Taxes are created for many reasons but our method of assessing it on customers who should not have been paying it was wrong.

        • Dark Arc
          link
          fedilink
          English
          11 year ago

          Fair enough, perhaps I’ve misinterpreted the intent of your comment. I don’t see how it adds to a constructive conversation one way or the other on the issue at hand; maybe you just intended to highlight the absurdity of an ISP’s fee structure.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            31 year ago

            I was highlighing the absurdity of the fee structure.

            To expand on what I said in my second comment, the tax was probably created by the government to serve a relevant purpose that I don’t know about. I trust that there is a reason for the tax. The fact that it was being applied inappropriately to customers was the absurd part. It’s like an electric vehicle being taxed for highway tailpipe emissions.

            • Dark Arc
              link
              fedilink
              English
              11 year ago

              Okay, I understand better now; thank you for clarifying :)

  • @Squander
    link
    English
    61 year ago

    Anyone know why some of the titles on lemmy are showing the code for & (amp) in the titles? Is it a format input thats messing up and displaying the HTML?

    • @Squander
      link
      English
      41 year ago

      Double html encoding?