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Broadband labels
On April 10, 2024, the FCC announced that consumer labels for broadband internet service are required for most providers. These labels will be required at any point of sale, including online and in-store for large ISPs. Of course Spectrum has it buried. You can get to it by entering your address to look for service and then you need an extra click to check the checkmark that says “Show all Broadband Labels”. Granted, Charter Spectrum could have lots of regional pricing, but it seems more like they don’t want you to easily find pricing, here is an screenshot of the labels to make it easier for those using a search engine to find.
In contrast to Spectrum, Sonic has a page dedicated to its broadband facts thats easily found by search engines and does not require anyone to enter in their address.
The label below is pricing for Pasadena, CA, so they may vary based on which region of the United States that you are in. If you are in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, chances are your prices will be the same. The monthly prices increase 70% after the introductory rate for the cheapest 300 Mbps plan. That plan doesn’t even meet the Federal Communication Commission’s definition of “broadband”, which states upload speeds should be at 20 Mbps. Spectrum only offers 10 Mbps for their cheapest plan, which is $84.99/month. If you want to try broadcasting a livestream on YouTube, you’ll be needing to subscribe to the next tier up to get 20 Mbps upload speeds, otherwise you’ll be getting a whole lot of warning and error messages on your livestream dashboard.
Residential rates for Spectrum internet
Link to the residential labels is here. Screenshot below:
Business rates for Spectrum internet
Direct link to the business labels is here
These new Broadband Labels are supposed to resemble the nutrition labels that consumers are familiar with on their food products. Smaller providers with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines have a bit more time and can display their labels by October 10, 2024.
The labels should provide typical download and upload speeds, and make it way more clear that there are introductory monthly prices. You can easily find additional monthly fees and one time fees a lot easier with these labels. No more digging through the fine print.
The labels also provide easy to access links to pages where you can find discounts and bundles as well as network policies and customer support pages and contact numbers.
If your internet service provider is not displaying labels or has posted inaccurate information, you can file a complaint with the FCC.
The broadband consumer label also requires providers to include a link to machine-readable format, such as a CSV file, but not all providers seem to have that yet.