Internet service plans will soon be required to have ‘nutrition’ labels

calories Portion sizes. Total sugars. Thanks to a law passed in 1990, you can look at a box of macaroni and get all the information you need to make an informed decision about your family’s nutrition.

Soon you will be able to do the same with broadband Internet service.

Last month, four members of the Federal Communications Commission unanimously agreed to move forward with a proposal for broadband Internet “nutrition” labels. Instead of forcing you to look up the details, the idea is that internet service providers should offer clear and straightforward explanations of their plans and services before you sign anything for transparency.

If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because regulators have been trying to make these labels happen for years. (At one point, the Obama-era FCC pushed the idea as a voluntary measure, which current chair Jessica Rosenworcel admits “never got that far.”) Now, due to the concept’s inclusion in the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure bill, the FCC has final rules for the labels by November.

But what will those labels really do for us? Here’s what you need to know about them and what they could mean for your internet bill.

1 What will they tell me?

Lots. The FCC’s plan is to adopt an earlier design for these labels that includes pricing for specific plans, data speeds, introductory rates, one-time costs like activation, early termination fees, and more.

Some of the details are pretty obvious, but some of them are important and not always talked about enough. Consider these examples:

– Monthly data allowance: Some internet service providers have plans with built-in limits on how much data you can use in a single month. Comcast’s Xfinity, for example, imposes a 1.2-terabyte limit on most home Internet plans outside the Northeast. That was a surprise to me when I moved to San Francisco.

If your internet plan has this type of limit, the label will also list any overage fees you’ll need to pay.

– Rental costs: You may not often think about the box, or boxes, that provide you with the Internet, but they may be costing you. Many Internet Service Providers charge customers monthly to rent their modems, routers, or both, but buying your own hardware (and maybe even selling it later) is often a better option.

If there are other things you’d like these labels to highlight, or if you have an experience with selecting broadband plans that you’d like to share, you should consider submitting a public comment for the agency to consider.

2 Where will these labels live?

For now, the FCC wants these labels to appear at “point of sale” locations, both online and in physical locations. And if the agency gets its way, these labels could look like the ones on the sides of cereal boxes. (At least, that’s what the examples they’ve shown so far look like.)

However, as always, the devil is in the details.

In its notice of proposed rulemaking, the agency wonders aloud whether it should require Internet service providers, or ISPs, to provide paper copies of these labels. What about the websites? Should ISPs display the labels prominently, or can they hide them behind a link that you’ll need to click? How much disclosure is too much or not enough?

Those are the kinds of details that will need to be ironed out in the coming months, and the FCC is open to hearing what you think.

3 Will these help me save money on my internet service?

Maybe.

On the one hand, transparency is a big problem. Seeing more clearly what your internet plan does (and doesn’t) offer might make it easier for you to cut out features and add-ons you don’t really need. That is an advantage. And at the very least, it should give you a better understanding of why your bill costs as much as it does each month. That might inspire you to save money, for example by switching to a less expensive plan with the same company.

In theory, these labels should also make it easy to directly compare one internet service provider’s plans with another, which could help prevent you from overpaying every month. The reason I say “in theory” is because many Americans, myself included, don’t really have a say in the Internet service they use.

Instead, they make do with the limited (and sometimes uncontested) options available to them in their market. The executive order that President Joe Biden signed in July to promote “competition in the American economy” noted that 200 million people in the United States “live in an area with only one or two reliable high-speed Internet providers.” Meanwhile, some reports suggest that close to half of that number have access to a single ISP. Informational labels can only do so much when there’s a game in town.

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