Federal Communications Commission	FCC 22-86


STATEMENT OF
CHAIRWOMAN JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
Re:	Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency, CG Docket No. 22-2, Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (November 14, 2022)
If you walk into a grocery store and pull boxes of cereal from the shelves, you can easily compare calories and carbohydrates.  That’s because the black and white nutrition labels that have been on food products for decades are simple to read and easy to understand.  These labels are not just iconic.  They are extraordinarily useful because they help consumers make good choices.
Earlier this year at the Federal Communications Commission, we proposed to do the same thing with broadband.  That’s because broadband is now an essential service—for everyone, everywhere.  Today, with the support of Congress in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we adopt rules that, for the first time, require internet service providers to display broadband nutrition labels for both wireless and wired services.
We are borrowing the model from food products because we want to make basic information about internet service easy to understand.  Going forward, our rules will require that broadband nutrition labels are fully displayed when a consumer is making a purchasing decision.  That means consumers will have simple, easy-to-read facts about price, speed, data allowances, and other aspects of high-speed internet service up front.  Plus, by requiring that providers display introductory rates clearly, we are seeking to end the kind of unexpected fees and junk costs that can get buried in long and mind-numbingly confusing statements of terms and conditions.
While what is on the label itself is important, it is just as critical to understand where and how these broadband labels will be available.  We are requiring them to be fully displayed on the main purchasing pages that providers have online.  That means they cannot be buried in multiple clicks or reduced to a link or icon that a consumer might miss.  We are also making these labels accessible after a consumer makes a choice and subscribes to broadband.  We require these labels to be accessible on a consumer’s online account, which means they have consistent access to them when they pay their bill or engage in any other account activity online.  On top of that, we are requiring these labels to be machine-readable.  All of this means information about your internet service will be easy to find at any time.  It will also make it easier to shop around and compare if you want to switch services.  
This is important because you shouldn’t have to be a lawyer to know just what is in your internet service plan or an engineer to understand just how your provider is treating your data.  Broadband nutrition labels are designed to make it simpler for consumers to know what they are getting, hold providers to their promises, and benefit from greater competition—which means better service and prices for everyone.  
We are now at work on the next steps to make sure these labels reach the broadband marketplace.  Doing that requires review by the Office of Management and Budget under the Paperwork Reduction Act.  But carriers can take a look at these requirements and get started early.  Because over time, we want to refine and improve our broadband nutrition labels.  That’s why the agency also kicks off a further rulemaking today that asks about how to incorporate more pricing and discount data on the label itself, how to measure service reliability, and how to make broadband nutrition labels even more accessible.  In the end our goal is to make the purchasing of broadband service more simple and more competitive for consumers everywhere.  
2