ICLE Comments on FCC Comments on Changes to Broadband Labels for Consumers
Executive Summary
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposes to streamline its broadband-consumer label requirements by eliminating five mandates that impose costs exceeding their benefits to consumer decision making. The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) supports these reforms, which preserve all information relevant to purchase decisions while removing requirements that convey information ineffectively, create post-sale confusion, or serve purposes unrelated to helping consumers choose service plans.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) directed the commission to require broadband labels disclosing information about service plans, referencing the FCC’s 2016 public notice. The commission’s 2022 implementing rules exceeded this mandate by adding requirements not contemplated by the referenced notice. After three years of implementation experience, the FCC now proposes targeted corrections.
Research in behavioral economics suggests the effectiveness of disclosures depends not on the volume of information presented, but whether it enables better consumer decisions. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Economics has concluded that disclosures providing “too much, irrelevant, or unnecessary information” may induce consumers to ignore the information completely.
The five proposed changes address specific documented problems. Eliminating the telephone-reading requirement corrects a mismatch created when a visual-comparison tool designed for quick scanning is forced into a sequential oral format.
Allowing aggregation of location-variable fees reduces compliance burdens and consumer confusion. The current rules require itemizing fees that vary across jurisdictions, forcing providers to generate numerous label variations. Lengthy fee lists make comparing total monthly costs more difficult.
Eliminating customer-portal display removes a post-sale mandate that creates confusion, as point-of-sale labels become outdated when promotional rates expire or customers modify plans. Monthly bills and existing account disclosures already provide accurate current information.
Eliminating machine-readable format requirements removes a mandate that primarily benefits researchers and other third parties, rather than consumers. Three years after adoption, there is no evidence that significant consumer-facing comparison tools use these files.
Eliminating the two-year archiving requirement removes a recordkeeping mandate with speculative benefits unrelated to consumer shopping. Consumers need current labels for available plans, not historical labels for discontinued services.
Collectively, these changes reduce regulatory costs that would otherwise be passed through to consumers via higher prices or reduced network investment. The proposals preserve all decision-relevant information, while eliminating requirements that add cognitive burden without decision value, thereby improving consumer welfare.
I. Introduction
The International Center for Law & Economics (ICLE) submits these comments supporting the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) notice of proposed rulemaking (“NPRM”) to streamline its broadband-consumer labeling rules.[1] The FCC’s proposals represent an effort to improve the effectiveness of disclosure requirements by removing elements that impose substantial costs, while delivering minimal benefits to consumer decisionmaking.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) directed the FCC to require the display of broadband-consumer labels “to disclose to consumers information regarding broadband internet access service plans.”[2] The commission’s 2022 Broadband Label Order implemented this mandate by requiring labels that illustrate monthly prices (including introductory rates), fees, data allowances, contract terms, typical speeds and latency, and network-management practices.[3] The current proposals refine these requirements based on three years of implementation experience and stakeholder feedback.
In comments to the “Delete, Delete, Delete” proceeding, ICLE argued that the FCC should amend the broadband-consumer label rules in several ways consistent with the NPRM:
Simplify broadband “nutrition labels.” The FCC’s broadband-nutrition-label rules, implemented in 2024, represent a significant regulatory intervention in how internet service providers (ISPs) communicate their service offerings to consumers. The rules exceed the statutory requirements by mandating detailed disclosures—such as “typical” upload/download speeds and latency figures—that exceed the basic transparency provisions outlined in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.[4]
Additionally, the requirement that internet service providers (ISPs) update labels at all physical points of sale whenever a service plan changes its terms imposes administrative burdens not explicitly required by the statute.
The economic framework for evaluating disclosure mandates recognizes that effective transparency regulation is not measured by the volume of information required, but by whether the information helps consumers to make better decisions. Research in behavioral economics demonstrates that when disclosure requirements exceed consumers’ cognitive-processing capacity, decision quality deteriorates, rather than improves. The FCC’s proposals address this problem by eliminating requirements that add cognitive burden without corresponding decision value, thereby improving the label’s signal-to-noise ratio.
Eliminating the telephone-reading requirement corrects a regulatory mismatch where a visual-disclosure tool designed for quick comparison is forced into a sequential oral format.[5] The label’s tabular structure—which allows scanning and comparing key fields—is lost when read aloud. NTCA—The Rural Broadband Association describes this requirement as creating “a burdensome and potentially confusing interaction” where representatives must “read the label verbatim while consumers may interrupt to ask questions.”[6] The FCC’s proposal preserves accessibility obligations under Section 255 of the Communications Act while removing a specific mandate that serves consumers poorly.[7]
Allowing aggregation of location-variable fees reduces both compliance burdens and consumer confusion.[8] The current rules require itemizing discretionary pass-through fees like right-of-way charges and pole-attachment rates that vary across jurisdictions. This forces providers to create and maintain dozens or hundreds of label variations for identical service plans. For consumers, lengthy itemized fee lists create clutter that makes it more difficult to focus on total monthly costs, the most decision-relevant figure. Displaying aggregates preserves full price transparency while eliminating unnecessary detail.
Eliminating customer-portal display removes a post-sale requirement that creates confusion rather than clarity.[9] The point-of-sale label illustrates terms offered to new customers. After subscription, this static label becomes outdated as promotional rates expire, prices change, or customers modify their plans. Monthly bills and service agreements provide accurate current information. The portal requirement serves no useful consumer purpose and should be eliminated.
Eliminating machine-readable format requirements removes a mandate that primarily benefits third-party researchers rather than consumers shopping for service.[10] The IIJA directed the FCC to assist consumers in making informed purchasing decisions, rather than generating public-data feeds for academic research. If the commission requires structured pricing data for the enforcement of digital-discrimination rules or other regulatory purposes, targeted data collection through mandatory filings is more efficient than requiring all providers to maintain publicly accessible, machine-readable files.
Eliminating two-year archiving removes a recordkeeping requirement with speculative benefits unrelated to consumer shopping.[11] Consumers need current labels for available plans, not historical labels for discontinued services. For billing disputes, customers rely on their service agreements and monthly bills, not archived point-of-sale labels. If the FCC needs historical labels for enforcement, it can require providers to maintain records for production upon regulatory demand, rather than mandating public archives.
These changes will reduce regulatory costs that are ultimately passed through to consumers via higher prices or reduced investment in network quality. In reasonably competitive telecommunications markets, regulatory compliance costs are borne by consumers through these mechanisms, rather than by providers as reduced profits.[12] The FCC’s proposals eliminate costs where they exceed benefits to consumers.
The proposals preserve all decision-relevant information, including the monthly price with all fees, typical speeds, data allowances, and contract terms. They eliminate requirements that convey information in ineffective formats, create post-sale confusion, or serve purposes other than consumer shopping. This is sound regulatory refinement that improves consumer welfare.
II. Behavioral and Economic Limits of Mandatory Disclosure
Effective consumer disclosures should emphasize information that helps people make better decisions. Because consumers often “satisfice,” rather than analyze every detail, disclosures work best when they highlight key facts—such as price, performance, or usage suitability—in clear, simple formats. When labels include too much extraneous information, people tend to ignore them altogether, defeating their purpose. Research and FTC analysis shows that overly complex disclosures increase confusion and search costs, whereas focused, well-designed ones improve comparison shopping. In the case of broadband labels, the goal is to remove unnecessary details and make critical information—cost, speed, and data limits—easy to find and understand.
A. More Information Is Not Better Information
Mandatory disclosure aims to correct information asymmetries between sellers and buyers, reducing consumers’ search costs and facilitating comparison shopping.[13] The theoretical benefit depends on the disclosure improving consumer decisions. This outcome is not automatic. The design, format, and content of disclosure requirements determine whether they help or hinder consumer choice.
Research on consumer perception of product labels demonstrates that consumers do not systematically read and weigh every piece of disclosed information. Most people engage in what psychologists term “satisficing”: scanning for key information sufficient to make an acceptable choice, rather than the “optimal” one.[14] Because attention, time, and cognitive resources are limited, effective label design should therefore present information in a way that supports satisficing, thereby enabling consumers to reach a “good-enough” decision that aligns with their preferences and constraints.[15]
Studies of nutrition and energy labels show that when key attributes are salient, summarized, and evaluatively coded—e.g., through color coding or single-grade indicators—they can improve consumer choices; thus, traffic-light systems are more effective than nutrition tables. For example, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) literature review of food-packaging labels indicates that consumers generally prefer “simple labels (such as the ones using a summary system)” and that “interpretational aids”—rather than detailed numeric data—can help consumers identify healthy foods and make healthy point-of-purchase choices.[16]
The FTC Bureau of Economics examined these issues specifically in the context of disclosure regulation. The staff report concluded:
Developing consumer disclosures is tricky. … Difficult-to-understand and confusing disclosures, and disclosures that provide too much, irrelevant, or unnecessary information, can make it difficult, time-consuming, and frustrating for consumers to understand what is being conveyed and sort the important points from the minor detail. Such disclosures may induce consumers to ignore the information completely because it is simply too much trouble.[17]
The report recommended that disclosure requirements focus on decision-relevant information and avoid overwhelming consumers with details that do not facilitate comparison shopping. When disclosure documents contain excessive detail, consumers are more likely to skip the disclosure entirely or rely on crude heuristics that ignore the disclosed information.
Applied to broadband labels, this research suggests that a disclosure format cluttered with low-value information makes it harder for consumers to focus on the key factors: total monthly cost, speeds that meet their needs, and whether data allowances match their usage patterns. The FCC’s proposals improve the label’s effectiveness by enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio—removing information that does not aid comparison shopping while preserving all decision-relevant content.
B. Compliance Costs Are Consumer Costs
Regulatory compliance imposes direct costs on firms, including administrative expenses for data collection and verification, technological costs for building and maintaining disclosure systems, legal costs for ensuring compliance, and opportunity costs resulting from resources diverted to compliance rather than productive investment. In competitive markets, firms earn normal returns and cannot sustain below-market profits indefinitely. These costs are therefore passed through to consumers via higher prices or offset by reduced expenditures on network investment and service quality.[18]
Firms without substantial market power cannot absorb large cost increases on their own. Instead, these costs are passed on to consumers through multiple channels. The most direct channel is higher monthly prices, which allow providers to recover compliance costs. A provider facing increased annual compliance costs of $1 million must recover those costs by increasing aggregate revenue by approximately $1 million. Less directly but potentially more significantly, compliance costs divert resources from productive investment. A small ISP operating in rural areas faces a choice between allocating resources to regulatory compliance systems and investing in network expansion. The opportunity cost of compliance is reduced service quality or slower deployment to unserved areas.
Regulatory compliance costs disproportionately burden smaller firms because these firms’ fixed compliance costs cannot be spread across as large a customer base. This matters particularly for broadband, where small providers serve many rural and underserved areas. Requirements like maintaining machine-readable data files or two-year archives impose fixed costs that must be spread across relatively few subscribers, making these providers less competitive and potentially slowing deployment to areas that need it most.
The proper evaluation of disclosure requirements would therefore ask: Do the incremental benefits to consumer decision making justify the additional costs imposed? When costs exceed benefits, the regulation makes consumers worse off. The FCC’s proposals eliminate requirements where this cost-benefit analysis tilts against the mandate.
C. Markets Already Reward Transparency
Providers operating in competitive markets have commercial incentives to communicate effectively with potential customers. Clear information about pricing, speeds, and terms helps to attract customers. Confusion and opacity can increase customer-service costs, lead to billing disputes and result in negative word of mouth. These market incentives often align with transparency goals, reducing the need for prescriptive mandates.
A provider seeking to attract customers who prefer Spanish-language communications benefits from providing marketing materials, labels, and customer service in Spanish. The provider bears the translation cost but captures the benefits through increased sales and reduced customer-service costs. These incentives operate regardless of regulatory mandates. Prescriptive requirements add value primarily in cases where market incentives fail, but they also impose costs in cases where market incentives already operate effectively.
The economic question for any mandate is whether it corrects a market failure or simply imposes costs where providers would have acted similarly in the absence of regulation. The FCC’s proposals recognize that not all requirements pass this test. Some mandates impose substantial costs in situations where market incentives already encourage similar behavior, or where the mandated approach is less effective than alternatives providers might choose.
III. Analysis of Specific Proposals
Several existing broadband-label requirements are poorly aligned with how consumers shop and should therefore be either removed or relaxed. Forcing providers to read the entire visual label aloud over the phone turns a quick comparison tool into a confusing, linear script, while customers would be better served by conversational explanations tailored to their questions. Allowing providers to aggregate small, location-specific fees into a single line item would enable consumers to focus on total monthly costs, rather than being overwhelmed by “fee clutter.” Requiring labels in customer portals, in machine-readable formats, and in public archives for two years primarily creates costs and confusion, as these do little to assist current customers in making choices and primarily serve speculative or third-party purposes. Performance-based standards (like accessibility and accurate total pricing) are superior to prescriptive formatting mandates that are costly and often counterproductive.
A. Eliminating the Telephone-Reading Requirement
The FCC correctly proposes to remove the requirement that providers read entire labels to customers shopping over the phone.[19] This requirement exemplifies what former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer termed “regulatory mismatch,” where the regulatory tool is poorly suited to the problem it aims to solve or attempts to solve a “market failure” that does not exist.[20]
The broadband label is designed as a visual-comparison tool. It uses a tabular format with distinct sections for pricing, speeds, data allowances, fees, and contract terms. This visual structure allows consumers to quickly scan, compare multiple plans side-by-side, and return to specific sections as needed. The format is modeled on nutrition labels, which research shows to be effective because consumers can quickly locate the specific information they care about most.[21]
Reading this visual format aloud transforms it into a sequential stream of information that consumers must process and retain aurally without the ability to scan, compare, or refer back. NTCA describes this as creating “a burdensome and potentially confusing interaction as ISP representatives could be required to read the label verbatim while consumers may interrupt to ask questions or seek clarification.”[22]
This is not merely an industry complaint about cost. It describes a genuine mismatch, in that the mandated format serves neither the customer-service representative nor the consumer effectively.
The FCC’s proposal does not eliminate telephone sales or reduce information available to telephone customers. It removes the specific requirement to read the entire formatted label verbatim. Customer-service representatives can still discuss pricing, speeds, data allowances, contract terms, and other plan features. They can answer specific questions customers have. They can provide information in a conversational manner suited to telephone communication. The proposal simply eliminates a prescriptive mandate that forces information into an ineffective format.
The current rule also goes beyond congressional intent. The IIJA directed the FCC to require “display” of labels.[23] Reading information aloud does not constitute “display”; it is, instead, an attempted translation of visual information to an oral format for which the label was not designed. The 2016 Broadband Labels Public Notice, which the act referenced, did not contemplate or require reading labels over the phone.[24]
The FCC explicitly preserves accessibility obligations, noting that this change “would not negate providers’ continuing obligation to ensure the accessibility of broadband labels for people with disabilities.”[25] Section 255 of the Communications Act requires telecommunications providers to make their services and information accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, “if readily achievable.”[26] This includes ensuring that information about services is available in accessible formats. Providers must comply with these obligations through whatever means are effective, which might include screen-reader compatibility, conversational explanation by trained representatives, or other accommodations. A performance standard that requires accessibility, while allowing flexibility in how to achieve it, is consistent with modern accessibility law and often produces better outcomes than prescriptive mandates.
B. Allowing Aggregation of Location-Variable Fees
The FCC’s proposal to allow aggregation of discretionary recurring fees that vary by consumer location addresses a genuine compliance burden, while improving label clarity for consumers.[27] Current rules require itemizing such fees as state and local right-of-way charges and pole-rental fees that differ across jurisdictions. This forces providers to create and maintain separate label versions for each unique combination of location-variable fees.
USTelecom explains that “listing itemized discretionary charges, including pass through government-imposed fees, is onerous because providers must create labels to account for geographic variability” and “the burden of compliance far outweighs any consumer benefit.”[28] A provider operating across multiple states may face dozens or even hundreds of different combinations of local fees. The current rule requires creating and maintaining a separate label for each combination. This creates substantial administrative costs for data collection, label generation, version control, and ongoing maintenance as local fees change.
From the consumer’s perspective, itemized lists of location-variable fees create what some call “fee clutter.” When shopping for broadband service, the decision-relevant information is the total monthly cost. A consumer comparing two providers needs to know: “What will I pay each month for this service at my address?” Breaking that total into numerous small components—$1.50 for one local fee, $2.25 for another, $0.75 for a third—does not improve the comparison. It adds cognitive burden without decision value.
Research has found that, while some amount of price partitioning can help consumers (e.g., separating taxes from base prices), excessive itemization creates cognitive burdens that reduce consumer welfare.[29] When the number of itemized charges becomes large, consumers struggle to calculate and compare total costs, undermining the very transparency the itemization was meant to provide.
The FCC proposes allowing providers to display these fees as an aggregate amount, rather than itemizing each component.[30] This approach preserves transparency—consumers would continue to see the total monthly cost, including all fees—while eliminating the compliance burden of maintaining multiple label versions and reducing the cognitive burden of processing lengthy fee lists. The consumer gets the decision-relevant information (total cost) without the clutter of itemized breakdowns that do not aid comparison.
The commission seeks comment on whether the aggregate amount should be the precise amount or the maximum amount consumers might incur.[31] The latter approach—displaying the maximum or “up to” amount—would further reduce compliance costs by allowing a single label to cover a range of locations with somewhat different fee structures. This sacrifices a small amount of precision (the consumer might pay slightly less than the stated maximum) for a large gain in simplicity. Given that consumers primarily need to compare total costs across providers, this tradeoff appears favorable.
This proposal should not be confused with concerns about so-called “junk fees.” Several federal agencies have appropriately moved to address fees with misleading names like “Network Enhancement Fee” or “Broadcast TV Fee” that represent core costs of providing service, artificially separated to make the advertised prices appear lower.[32] The proper solution to such fees is all-in pricing requirements or prohibition of deceptive fee structures. The FCC’s proposal here addresses a different category: genuine external costs that vary by location and that providers pass through to consumers. The aggregate display preserves transparency about total cost while eliminating unnecessary itemization.
C. Eliminating Customer-Portal Display
The FCC proposes to eliminate the requirement that providers display labels in customer-account portals.[33] This requirement addresses a post-sale context where the point-of-sale label is no longer the appropriate disclosure tool.
The broadband label is designed to facilitate pre-purchase comparison shopping. It shows the terms offered to new customers at the point of sale. After a customer subscribes, the relevant service information is contained in their service agreement and monthly bills. These documents reflect the customer’s current pricing (which may have changed from promotional rates), actual usage, any modifications they have made to the plan, and current charges.
Displaying the original point-of-sale label in the customer portal creates confusion, rather than clarity. Consider a straightforward example: A customer subscribes under a monthly promotional rate of $49.99 for the first year, after which the price increases to $69.99, as disclosed at the time of purchase. Six months into the contract, the customer upgrades to a higher speed tier, increasing the price to $79.99. If the point-of-sale label displayed in the portal still shows the original $49.99 promotional rate and the original speed tier, then the label is misleading and does not reflect the customer’s current service or pricing.
The monthly bill, updated in real-time, provides accurate current information about charges, usage, and plan features. If a customer wants to compare their current service to other available options, they can access point-of-sale labels for currently available plans on the provider’s public website, which FCC rules already require.[34] The portal label serves neither the purpose of showing current charges (which bills do better) nor the purpose of facilitating comparison to available alternatives (which current point-of-sale labels on the website do better).
The elimination of this requirement would not leave customers without information or recourse. Customers retain their service agreements, monthly bills showing all charges, and access to current labels for available plans. These tools provide the information customers need in the post-sale context. The portal-display requirement imposes costs (technical implementation, ongoing maintenance, and risk of consumer confusion from outdated information) without corresponding benefits.
D. Eliminating Machine-Readable-Format Requirements
The FCC’s proposal to eliminate the requirement that providers display label information in machine-readable format addresses a mandate that primarily serves third parties, rather than consumers shopping for service.[35] The IIJA directed the commission to require labels “to disclose to consumers information regarding broadband internet access service plans.”[36] The purpose is to help consumers make informed purchasing decisions. The machine-readable format requirement does not serve this purpose directly.
Current rules require providers to “provide the information in any label separately in a spreadsheet file format on provider websites via a dedicated URL that contains all of their labels.”[37] This creates structured data files that can be downloaded and analyzed. The primary beneficiaries are researchers, advocacy organizations, and journalists who want to analyze pricing and service-quality patterns across providers and geographic areas. While such research can have value, it differs from the statutory mandate to help consumers choose among service plans. Moreover, at this point, such research benefits are merely hypothetical, as we were unable to find any published academic research that has relied on machine-readable label information published by providers.
The compliance costs are substantial. USTelecom notes that “it is costly for providers to update and maintain spreadsheets with data from potentially hundreds of labels.”[38] Breezeline characterizes the requirement as adding “significant technical complexity and cost” and creating difficulties with “the highly granular nature of the required information and the static format of machine-readability.”[39] The expense is not data storage but the systems development and maintenance required to extract label information from providers’ various systems, format it consistently according to specifications, validate it for accuracy, and update it continuously as plans change. These are nontrivial software-development and database-management tasks.
The FCC asks the appropriate questions: “Is there evidence the requirement has benefited consumers or will benefit consumers in the future? Are there third-party shopping comparison tools for broadband internet access services that use the machine-readable spreadsheets?”[40] Three years after the rules were adopted, we find no significant consumer-facing tools relying on machine-readable label information published by providers. The requirement imposes costs on providers, and thus ultimately on their customers, to generate a public good that might someday benefit a small group of researchers.
If the FCC determines that it needs structured data on pricing and service terms for enforcement of digital-discrimination rules or other policy purposes, targeted data collection through mandatory filings is more efficient. The FCC regularly collects data from providers through forms and reports for specific regulatory purposes.[41] This approach imposes costs only where the commission has determined collection is necessary for statutory purposes. It also allows the FCC to specify exactly what data it needs, in what format, with what periodicity, and with what geographic granularity—rather than requiring providers to guess what researchers might want and to maintain public-data feeds indefinitely.
The machine-readable label requirement is a one-size-fits-all approach that may not match what the FCC needs for enforcement. It mandates that providers post all label information in spreadsheet format at dedicated URLs. This is prescriptive, rather than targeted. If the commission needs granular pricing data to enforce digital-discrimination rules, it can require submissions of specific data elements. If researchers want access to provider data for analysis, they can request it through Freedom of Information Act requests for FCC-collected data or through academic data-sharing agreements with providers.
The proper policy framework distinguishes between serving consumers directly (the statutory mandate) and generating public goods for third parties (a worthy goal but beyond the core mandate). When the two goals diverge, the FCC should focus on the statutory purpose. Eliminating the machine-readable requirement removes costs imposed on all consumers to serve a diffuse public benefit, while the FCC would retain full authority to collect whatever data it needs for regulatory purposes through targeted requirements.
E. Eliminating Two-Year Archiving
The FCC correctly proposes to eliminate the requirement that providers archive labels for two years after a service plan is no longer offered to new customers.[42] This recordkeeping requirement imposes costs without serving the label’s purpose of facilitating informed consumer choice.
Consumers shopping for broadband service need information about currently available plans. Historical labels for discontinued services do not aid current purchase decisions. The two-year archive serves a different purpose: providing potential evidence for regulatory enforcement actions or billing disputes that might arise years after a plan was offered.
For billing disputes between customers and providers, the relevant documents are the customer’s service agreement, monthly bills, and records of any plan changes during their subscription. These documents reflect the customer’s actual service and charges. Providers maintain these records as part of normal business operations and for their own accounting purposes. When a customer disputes a charge, they reference their service agreement and bills, not the archived point-of-sale label that was displayed to prospective customers at some point in the past.
The archived labels are point-of-sale disclosures showing what was offered to new customers at a particular time. They are not evidence of the specific terms to a given customer agreed. A customer who subscribed three years ago has their own service agreement from that time, which governs their relationship with the provider. The archived label from three years ago shows what was offered to the market generally but is not the binding contract document for any particular customer.
The primary use case for the archive is regulatory enforcement. If the FCC investigates whether a provider engaged in deceptive advertising or made misleading claims about a plan that is no longer offered, the archived label could serve as evidence. This is a legitimate enforcement concern, but it differs from consumer benefit in shopping for service—the focus of the statutory mandate.
If the FCC determines it needs historical labels for enforcement purposes, more targeted approaches are available. The FCC can require providers to maintain archives for potential production in response to FCC investigations. This is the standard approach for business records in regulated industries: Firms must maintain records and produce them upon regulatory demand but need not make them publicly available indefinitely.[43] Alternatively, the FCC could require providers to submit discontinued labels to the FCC for its own archive. Either approach serves the enforcement goal without imposing costs on all providers to maintain public archives based solely on speculation that they might someday be needed.
The distinction between serving consumer-shopping decisions and serving speculative enforcement needs matters because the costs differ. Mandating that all providers maintain public archives of all historical labels imposes costs to serve a purpose that may never materialize for most providers. If and when the FCC needs historical labels for specific enforcement actions, it can obtain them through targeted requests.
IV. Recalibrating the Rules to Match Congressional Intent
The FCC’s proposals rest on sound statutory interpretation. The IIJA directed the commission to “promulgate regulations to require the display of broadband consumer labels, as described in the Public Notice the FCC issued on April 4, 2016 (DA 16-357), to disclose to consumers information regarding broadband internet access service plans.”[44] The act specified that labels must “include information regarding whether the offered price is an introductory rate and, if so, the price the consumer will be required to pay following the introductory period.”[45]
This statutory directive is more limited than the rules the FCC adopted in 2022. The IIJA references the 2016 public notice, which proposed a straightforward label focused on key plan characteristics: monthly price, speeds, data allowances, contract terms, and links to additional information.[46] The 2016 notice did not propose or contemplate machine-readable formats, two-year archiving, display in customer portals, or reading labels over the phone.
When Congress references a specific document in delegating regulatory authority, that reference serves to bound the delegation. The most natural reading is that Congress wanted the type of labels described in that notice—a clear, visual disclosure at the point of sale showing key plan features—not whatever expanded requirements the FCC might later determine would be useful for other purposes. As ICLE’s Gus Hurwitz and Geoffrey Manne explain:
Regulation as a discovery process, in its simplest formulation, asks regulators to consider that they might be wrong. That they might be asking the wrong questions, collecting the wrong information, analyzing it the wrong way—or even that Congress has given them the wrong authority or misunderstood the problem that Congress has tasked them to address. And, in response to these concerns, regulation as a discovery process asks regulators to build them into the regulatory process itself. This is because regulation does not operate like a competitive market. If Amazon Prime had not been the successful idea that it was, consumers would not have adopted it, other firms would have obtained competitive advantage over Amazon, and the idea would have fallen into the dustbin of history. But when an agency promulgates a rule pursuant to APA processes, that rule takes on the force of law—good or bad, there is no market mechanism by which it will succeed [or] fail.[47]
The FCC’s 2022 Broadband Label Order exceeded the IIJA’s core requirements by adding elements not contemplated in the 2016 public notice. The current proposals recalibrate the rules to better match congressional intent. This recalibration reflects sound regulatory practice: adopting rules based on the best information available at the time, observing their effects during implementation, soliciting stakeholder feedback, and adjusting based on evidence.
The FCC’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative, which prompted this review, represents this kind of evidence-based reassessment.[48] Regulations can produce unintended consequences. Requirements that appear reasonable ex ante may prove burdensome or ineffective in practice. A regulatory system that cannot adapt based on implementation experience will accumulate inefficient rules over time through “regulatory accretion,” or more informally, “regulatory creep.”
The FCC’s willingness to propose eliminating requirements that have proven burdensome or ineffective creates a valuable precedent. It demonstrates that agencies can and should revisit regulations, acknowledge when initial rules had unintended consequences, and make corrections based on evidence. This approach benefits consumers through more efficient regulation that focuses resources on requirements that improve decision making.
V. Conclusion
The FCC’s proposals to streamline broadband-label requirements represent sound regulatory refinement based on implementation experience. The proposals preserve all decision-relevant information for consumers—monthly price including all fees, typical speeds, data allowances, and contract terms—while eliminating requirements that convey information in ineffective formats, create post-sale confusion, or primarily serve purposes other than consumer shopping.
The economic analysis supports these changes. Research on consumer decision making demonstrates that excessive information reduces, rather than improves, decision quality. Regulatory costs are ultimately borne by consumers through higher prices or reduced investment. The proper evaluation asks whether the benefits to consumer decision making justify the costs imposed. The FCC’s proposals eliminate requirements where costs exceed benefits.
The specific proposals address genuine problems:
- The telephone-reading requirement forces a visual-comparison tool into a sequential oral format that serves consumers poorly.
- The itemization requirement for location-variable fees creates compliance burdens and consumer confusion without improving comparison shopping.
- The customer-portal-display requirement creates confusion by showing outdated point-of-sale labels after subscription.
- The machine-readable-format requirement serves researchers, rather than consumers shopping for service.
- The two-year archiving requirement imposes costs to serve speculative enforcement needs unrelated to consumer shopping.
These changes will improve the label’s effectiveness for its core purpose: helping consumers make informed choices among broadband-service plans. By reducing the cognitive burden of processing low-value information and eliminating costs that are passed through to consumers, the proposals serve the public interest.
ICLE urges the FCC to adopt the proposed streamlining changes and to continue this approach of evidence-based regulatory refinement in other contexts.
[1] Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency; Delete, Delete, Delete, 90 Fed. Reg. 55,713 (proposed Dec. 3, 2025) (to be codified at 47 C.F.R. pt. 64) [hereinafter “NPRM”]; see also Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency; Delete, Delete, Delete, CG Docket No. 22-2, GN Docket No. 25-133, Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, FCC 25-74 (Nov. 3, 2025) [hereinafter “Draft NPRM”]. The FCC’s publicly released NPRM (FCC 25-74) includes statements not reproduced in the Federal Register publication. While the Federal Register version is the operative text for notice and comment, these comments refer to the FCC-released version, where necessary, to reflect the Commission’s articulated reasoning and to respond to questions that appear only in that version.
[2] Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Pub. L. No. 117-58, § 60504(a), 135 Stat. 429, 1244 (2021), codified at 47 U.S.C. § 1753(a).
[3] Empowering Broadband Consumers Through Transparency, CG Docket No. 22-2, Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 37 FCC Rcd. 13686 (2022) [hereinafter “Broadband Label Order”].
[4] Comments of the International Center for Law & Economics Re: Delete, Delete, Delete, GN Docket No. 25-13352 (Apr. 11, 2025), available at https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2025-Delete-Delete-Delete-Comments-r3.pdf.
[5] NPRM ¶ 4.
[6] Draft NPRM ¶ 11.
[7] NPRM ¶ 4; 47 U.S.C. § 255(c) (“A provider of telecommunications service shall ensure that the service is accessible to and usable by individuals with disabilities, if readily achievable.”).
[8] NPRM ¶ 5.
[9] NPRM ¶ 7.
[10] NPRM ¶ 8.
[11] NPRM ¶ 9.
[12] See, e.g., Eric Fruits & Geoffrey A. Manne, Quack Attack: De Facto Rate Regulation in Telecommunications, Int’l Ctr. Law & Econ. (Mar. 30, 2023), available at https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/De-Facto-Rate-Reg-Final-1.pdf (“Even if a regulator disavows explicit rate regulation, intervention into providers’ business models and technical decisions will inevitably shape pricing in much the same way as explicit price regulation does, through the “hydraulic effect” of regulation.”) citing Geoffrey A. Manne, The Hydraulic Theory of Disclosure Regulation and Other Costs of Disclosure, 58 Ala. L. Rev. 473 (2007).
[13] Jonathan Kanter et al., Comment of the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice on Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, Docket No. 2023-24234 note 5 (Feb. 7, 2024), https://www.justice.gov/atr/media/1337936/dl?inline (citing economic research regarding the potential benefits of pricing transparency, including how pricing transparency lowers costs for consumers).
[14] Herbert A. Simon, Rational Choice and the Structure of the Environment, 63 Psychol. Rev. 129 (1956) (“Evidently, organisms adapt well enough to ‘satisfice’; they do not, in general, ‘optimize.’”); Herbert A. Simon, A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice, 69 Q.J. Econ. 99 (1955); see also Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (Gerd Gigerenzer & Reinhard Selten eds., 2001).
[15] Peter M. Todd & Gerd Gigerenzer, Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World (2012).
[16] Linda Verrill et al., Front of Package Labeling Literature Review, Food & Drug Admin. (2023), https://www.fda.gov/media/175617/download.
[17] James M. Lacko & Janis K. Pappalardo, Improving Consumer Mortgage Disclosures: An Empirical Assessment of Current and Prototype Disclosure Forms 127 (FTC Bur. of Econ. Staff Rept., Jun. 2007), available at https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/improving-consumer-mortgage-disclosures-empirical-assessment-current-and-prototype-disclosure-forms/p025505mortgagedisclosurereport.pdf.
[18] See, e.g., Brian Albrecht, Stop Blaming Rising Egg Prices on Market Power, Truth on the Mkt. (Feb. 21, 2025), https://truthonthemarket.com/2025/02/21/stop-blaming-rising-egg-prices-on-market-power (“In fact, competitive markets often show larger cost pass-through than monopolistic ones.”); see also Eric Fruits, Ben Sperry, & Kristian Stout, Re: Promoting Competition in the American Economy: Cable Operator and DBS Provider Billing Practices, FCC, MB Docket No. 23-405 (Feb. 5, 2024), available at https://laweconcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024-Early-Termination-Fee-Comments-Final.pdf (concluding that a ban on early-termination fees would almost certainly lead to higher prices for cable and direct-broadcast-satellite customers).
[19] Draft NPRM ¶ 10.
[20] Eric Fruits, ‘Regulation and Its Reform’ by Stephen Breyer and ‘Contrived Competition’ by Richard Vietor, Truth on the Mkt. (Oct. 28, 2025), https://truthonthemarket.com/2025/10/28/regulation-and-its-reform-by-stephen-breyer-and-contrived-competition-by-richard-vietor, citing Stephen Breyer, Regulation and Its Reform (1982).
[21] Broadband Label Order ¶ 55.
[22] Draft NPRM ¶ 11.
[23] 47 U.S.C. § 1753(a).
[24] Consumer and Governmental Affairs, Wireline Competition, and Wireless Telecommunications Bureaus Approve Open Internet Broadband Consumer Labels, GN Docket No. 14-28, Public Notice, 31 FCC Rcd 3358 (CGB/WCB/WTB 2016) [hereinafter “2016 Broadband Labels PN”].
[25] Draft NPRM ¶ 11.
[26] 47 U.S.C. § 255(c).
[27] NPRM ¶ 5.
[28] Draft NPRM ¶ 14, note 31.
[29] Vicki G. Morwitz, Eric A. Greenleaf, & Eric J. Johnson, Divide and Prosper: Consumers’ Reactions to Partitioned Prices, 35 J. Marketing Res. 453 (1998), (“a large proportion of consumers do not account fully for surcharges and, therefore, underestimate the total product cost”).
[30] NPRM ¶ 5.
[31] Id.
[32] See, e.g., Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. pt. 464, 90 Fed. Reg. 2066 (Jan. 10, 2025); Trade Regulation Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 88 Fed. Reg. 77420 (Nov. 9, 2023), (“The Consumer Federation of America cited a review of internet bills by Consumer Reports that showed providers using terminology such as ‘network enhancement fee,’ ‘internet infrastructure fee,’ ‘deregulated administration fee,’ and ‘technology service fee,’ that made fees look like government-imposed, mandatory fees.”).
[33] NPRM ¶ 7.
[34] 47 C.F.R. § 8.1(a)(2).
[35] NPRM ¶ 8.
[36] 47 U.S.C. § 1753(a).
[37] Broadband Label Order, ¶ 68; see also 47 C.F.R. § 8.1(a)(3).
[38] Draft NPRM ¶ 20, note 43.
[39] Draft NPRM ¶ 20.
[40] NPRM ¶ 8.
[41] See, e.g., 47 C.F.R. Part 1, Subpart EE (Integrated Broadband Data Collection).
[42] NPRM ¶ 9.
[43] See, e.g., 47 C.F.R. § 42.73 (Commission authority to issue subpoenas for documents).
[44] 47 U.S.C. § 1753(a).
[45] 47 U.S.C. § 1753(b)(1).
[46] 47 U.S.C. § 1753(a).
[47] Justin (Gus) Hurwitz & Geoffrey A. Manne, Regulation as a Discovery Process (Oct. 16, 2024), https://ssrn.com/abstract=4721112.
[48] Delete, Delete, Delete, GN Docket No. 25-133, Public Notice, 40 FCC Rcd 1601 (GEN 2025)