Our world needs more transparency. It breeds competition... and hopefully bankrupts a few corrupt corporations.
Again: these aren't fees Comcast chooses to charge; it's money local governments are taxing from their residents, piggybacking on the ISP billing system.
It happens all the time in public discourse, in politics and in business.
Thinking about it, that of course is fundamental to sophisticated negotiations - not revealing your true objectives. And thinking more, people use that same tactic instinctively all the time in social situations.
That's a bunch of bullshit though. The cable companies use vastly different pricing all over the place, so there's already "thousands of variations of those labels" - in fact I'm pretty sure those labels are produced regionally.
I'm sympathetic to the point, and this feels like there's area for compromise here. Something along the lines of "We'll gladly support this change if local governments stop hiding taxes behind us."
I have to believe the NCTA made this issue clear; I wonder then if the FCC noticed, and if so, why there isn't a similar directive levied at municipalities to stop this practice?
To be clear, I fully support forcing ISPs to be transparent, period. But that is a messy issue they're dealing with, and I feel like there could easily a co-argument to localities to stop making it hard for them to be transparent.
Edit: Just saw your comment below about Home Rule. Drat.
from the article:
Providers are free, of course, to not pass these fees through to consumers
It's a low bar, I guess, but the excuses as to why it's too hard are just so insulting to the reader...
It's so incredibly strange to see a large corporation complain that figuring out how much its product costs is too hard with one hand while billing people those same fees just fine with the other.
They just mess around with their actual price until the final price lines up with their marketing. Its not exactly challenging math.
Before buying, I only ever saw one advertised price for this particular product, and since becoming a customer I only ever see that same price on the statements they send me each month.
That's right from the article.
I don't know what "people" want, I just want the quoted price to match the billed one.
If the ISPs wanted to include these fees in their base price, they can, as long as the customer is paying for the quoted price and not surprised by a bunch of unadvertised additional fees.
Consumers cannot make informed decisions about their providers if ISPs are allowed to tack on these costs that are ultimately unknowable to the consumer. If ISPs decide to pass these fees directly onto the consumer, rather than work them into their base price, then the consumer should be able to know what these fees will be upfront.
The ISPs are pushing back about non-mandatory passthrough government fees though. Unlike mandatory fees, which are required by law, non-mandatory pass-through fees are typically discretionary charges that ISPs choose to levy on their customers to offset expenses related to compliance with regulations or taxation.
Is this just not the cost of doing business? Do we pay a liquor license fee when we go to a bar? I think most people would find that absurd because that is just one of the business costs of opening a bar and those fees and taxes the business pays is baked into the price of food and beverages.
To most, this just looks like a way for ISPs to advertise their services at low prices while offloading the cost of doing business onto the consumer. Which the FCC is actually fine with. However, they are no longer fine with these providers lack of transparency in offloading these costs to the consumer.
Some non-mandatory pass-through fees (which FCC allows to be bundled into the base price if the ISP wants to do it that way):
Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee: ISPs may charge this fee to cover the costs associated with complying with various government regulations related to the provision of internet services.
Local Franchise Fee: Some local governments impose franchise fees on ISPs for the use of public rights-of-way or utility infrastructure.
State and Local Taxes: These could include sales taxes, use taxes, or telecommunications taxes that ISPs may pass on to customers as a way to cover the tax burden imposed on their services.
911 Fee: This fee helps fund emergency services like 911 call centers and systems.
Internet Infrastructure Surcharge: ISPs might implement this fee to cover the costs of maintaining and upgrading their network infrastructure.
Broadcast TV Fee: Though not directly a government fee, some ISPs list a Broadcast TV Fee on bills to cover the retransmission of local broadcast stations, which is influenced by regulatory requirements
Universal Service Fund Fee: This fee is used to support the Universal Service Fund, which helps provide affordable telecommunications services in underserved or remote areas (such as affordable broadband internet and phone service for low-income households, rural healthcare facilities, Tribal lands, schools, and libraries.)
Some other fees that some ISPs like to charge that are just literally the cost of doing business.
-Network access and maintenance fee
-Network enhancement fee
-Broadband cost recovery fee
-Internet infrastructure fee
-Municipal construction charge
-Administration fee
-Technology service fee
-High-speed network recovery fee
Some of these fees above would be like if a bar decides to charge a renovation fee after doing a remodel of their premises. Again, these fees are all just the cost of doing business and if they’re going to offload that cost to their customers, then their customers need to know exactly what they are paying for in advance.
If Comcast decides to change it's rate because of those fees it can explain that.
Does access to a conduit count? Does sales tax count?
Pass-through fees is a vague category that effectively means "I spent money" which is useless.
To your point actual pass through fees are transparent. So what don't they want to show you?
The claim of packaging is a crock of shit. Cox won't give me a quote without an exact address since thanks to ISPs building up pseudo monopolies they charge everyone something different.
If it is actually a package you can't list the final price due to that anyway.
After all you don't know where someone lives based on where they buy something.
Remember if you have to deal with quoting accurately you did all of the work to label properly.
>ISPs can meet the label requirement in alternate sales channels either by providing a hard copy of the label or by "directing the consumer to the specific web page on which the label appears."
There's already lookups for sales tax. If they can bill the address the fees, they can show the fees to the customer.
I'll take Falsehoods Programmers Believe About for 200.
Tbh. I didn't know this either. But it seemed so specific to say "status" so I looked it up. Til for me
"About Indian status Find out more about entitlement, benefits and registration under the Indian Act and the Indian Register.
Use of the term "Indian" Many Indigenous people in Canada prefer not to describe themselves as "Indians" and view this term as rooted in colonialism and racism. Under the Indian Act, the precise legal meaning of the term "Indian" refers to First Nations persons who are entitled to registration."
The pass through government fees get labeled as such (small township build rights fee).
The other non government fees that are really just the price of the service are now clear because the government fees are labeled.
So now the FCC is passing a regulation that will be impossible for them to weasel out of. Comcast has nobody to blame but themselves. And personally, the more miserable it makes Comcast, the happier it makes me.
These companies can't spend literal decades operating in bad faith then act surprised when voters and regulators say "enough is enough" and stop taking anything they say seriously.
These are, in fact, fees Comcast chooses to charge.
This reminds me of the confusion of some other employees when a start-up I was working for got purchased. The new owners proposed that we should sign documents agreeing certain conditions in exchange for which they'd pay us a "bonus" of an amount to be determined by a complicated formula at the end of their financial year.
So I glance at this document, it's as I think, and I explain this document requires you to work for them for a period of time, it's a weaker version of the document the senior people are signing or have signed -- but unlike theirs it doesn't actually pay us ordinary employees any money - therefore I explain you should not sign if you think you might want to work somewhere else any time soon. e.g. if your role makes no sense as part of the larger entity and you've got better things to do with your life rather than collect a salary for a few months until they realise you aren't necessary and fire you.
I got widespread objections - it has a bonus scheme. Yeah, the way that scheme works their accountants are going to decide whether they pay us money in a year's time. Guess what those accountants are going to say? They're going to say "No". If they wanted to pay us money, they would just pay us money as they did with our management. Employers can always pay you money. There is tax due on it if they do, but that's their problem not yours. When an employer doesn't give you money the reason is that they don't want to give you money. Don't ask for another explanation, it's demeaning for them to have to pretend and for you to listen.
In a year's time I got a call from the CTO, an old friend, was I on that bonus scheme? Yes, I said, it doesn't matter to me (then or now). He was warning people because he'd been tipped off that of course it was worthless, exactly as I had said, but whoever had told him had seen the numbers from the accountants now.
Comcast can choose not to charge these fees, but it wants to. It would like to be able to say "Our price is $49.99" and then bill you say $84 per month and blame the difference on vague "fees". They only need to justify how that adds up to $84 in the case that someone works very hard, maybe a journalist working on a story about rip off ISPs. And if it's bullshit? They just say "Oops" and refund some fees when caught if their lawyers tell them that's cheapest.
In the UK for a long time ISPs would claim their charges didn't match the advertised price because it didn't include a fee they paid to BT Openreach, the incumbent telco whose copper cables they're using to provide service. In a way they were telling the truth, Openreach did charge them a fee. Unfortunately that fee is published by law, fairly small, and it had been steadily going down, because "maintaining some copper cables under the street" isn't expensive. On the other hand the fee these ISPs would add to the supposed "price" for consumers was larger and going up over time. Eventually the regulator told them to knock it off with this bullshit and just tell people the actual price including this mandatory fee.
The reason I'm on this hobby horse is that I serve on my local village telecom commission and, after 2 years of zoning out and playing solitaire whenever the "franchise agreement" came up as a topic, I finally paid attention and learned that we were making high six figures every year in our general fund charging Comcast users a Comcast tax. It's a thing my commission works on: just how much we should soak local ISP users.
We've gone for several years without a franchise contract renewal because, apparently, Comcast doesn't want to do this anymore. I don't blame them!
And so as a result there's no Internet in your village and you just realised you aren't actually posting on HN and the reply has vanished in a puff of logic? No?
I'm still not clear on what your original objection was to my comment. Do you really not understand what a municipal pass-through fee is? I mean, why would you, but: the concept isn't that hard to grasp, right? It's a tax that the municipality requires the ISP to collect.
Really? How does this requirement supposedly work to your understanding? What exactly would happen if Comcast charged the wrong amount of tax to some customers. Do the customers get a receipt so that they know they've paid the correct local taxes?
The reality is that your village taxes Comcast via this "franchise agreement". Comcast have no obligation to "pass through" that cost to their customers in your village, they choose to charge opaque and vague extra "fees" which may or may not be adjusted according to the tax, and you are (presumably inadvertently) now here arguing that a giant corporation is the victim because they have to pay taxes like everybody else.
That would work if Comcast didn't pay you but that's not the scenario under discussion, I asked what happens if they don't charge their customers exactly what you wanted and the answer is "Nothing". You don't have standing to insist Comcast charge this fee to their customers, that's between Comcast and their customers.
> I have the impression that I've read a franchise contract, and you haven't. Am I wrong?
I have the impression that you haven't read the enabling law for this, and you've assumed that "pass through" establishes some sort of magical tax at a distance when it's merely permission for them to pass these taxes on to their customers. Comcast are not, in fact, required to do this but they choose to do so.
Specifically the 1934 Communications Act (yeah, I know, that's a super old law, it was updated to explain how cable TV works) tells cable companies that they may pass through such franchise fees to their end customer. Note the word used, not "must".
You are correct that it would somewhat increase their costs, such that they may have to increase their billing rate, but they are in no way required to pass the bill through directly to the customer.
Note that this is very different from taxes. Those are typically collected by the business, but owed by the purchaser. Right?
I like taxes! I'm a Democrat! But I think these particular taxes are pretty shady.
There is also usually a benefit for Comcast in this, as well. As such, it feels somewhat ok to treat them separate from taxes collected by Comcast. In particular, it is not uncommon for the franchise agreement to free up a ton of advertising concerns that the company would otherwise have to do.
I do think an interesting question is if this is counted as revenue for them? I'm currently assuming that they do count it in gross revenue? As such, it is literally them finding a way to get more revenue for places that cost more to do business, without open faced charging more.
That is, yes it is an expense that they have to pay, but so is, for example, the gas they have to pay to send a technician out. For that matter, the vehicle is also an expense of doing business. I'd be annoyed if those were line item added to my bill as a way to inflate what I paid. Not sure how this is any different?
Comcast has alll the data it needs to produce an accurate bill and is free to price its service in a manner that hides municipal fees if it chooses. Or not and it can advertise low rates and break the fees out.
Comcast wants to make a profit out of lack of transparency and leverage that lack of transparency in marketing against competitors, public and private.
This is not a difficult problem for them to solve, they just don't want to do it because these companies are run by greedy shitgibbons who don't want to tell you the actual price of their product until the last possible second.
What about listing the ceiling of the passthrough fees e.g. <$7.00 ?
> ISPs could alternatively roll such discretionary fees into the base monthly price, thereby eliminating the need to itemize them on the label.
they are lying and flat rate pricing is prohibited by the FDA? As somebody who does pay flat rate (not to Comcast) I wonder how my provider did pull off such an illegal feat. Also, T-mobile (not exactly an ISP but also a telecom) has "fees and taxes included" flat rate, and they are charging exactly as stated. Would be weird if this prohibition were applying only to ISPs but not to mobile providers?
FTA: "Comcast and other ISPs objected to a requirement that ISPs "list all recurring monthly fees" including "all charges that providers impose at their discretion, i.e., charges not mandated by a government.""
These types of rules may have unintended consequences, for example requiring that you collect a street address before providing pricing. It also may encourage telcos like TMobile, who embeds fees in rates to be more AT&T-like “executive retreat recovery surcharge”.
They already do this. In fact, they will collect your street address before informing you whether they've run fiber to any part of your ZIP (postal) code.
If they charge different fees depending on address (again, not taxes) then it seems like the intended effect to provide the actual price the consumer will pay.
In places like Europe telcos are able to do it just fine. What you see is what you pay.
> The rules require broadband providers to display, at the point of sale, labels that show prices, including introductory rates, as well as speeds, data allowances, and other critical broadband service information.
The ISP should be free to boldly call out on the billing statement that those fees are government mandated, if they choose to.
Oh it's not a random doorbell, it's a customer who's lawn I mow. ok. Totally ok then.