Soon, you'll be able to walk into the grocery store and check the calories on your broadband service.

OK, that's incorrect. But thanks to work by the FCC this year, Internet service providers will soon start publishing "broadband nutrition labels," offering consumers a transparent view of their service options.

Let's recap:

The FCC first approved broadband nutrition labels on a voluntary basis in 2016, but that effort was soon shuttered by former Chairman Ajit Pai.

Now the labels are back, and mandatory, thanks to a provision in the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act (IIJA), passed in November 2021, requiring the FCC to create regulations for broadband labels within a year.

The FCC kicked that process off in January 2022, soliciting public input on the rules.

And feedback it got. The Commission said it received comments from "more than seventy individuals, consumer advocates, industry members, trade associations, and academics."

Some of the hotly debated issues included whether providers should produce labels in "machine-readable format" (consumer groups said yes, ISPs said no), whether the FCC should require labels on "grandfathered" plans (ISPs said no, consumer groups said yes) and whether providers should display a "reliability" metric (consumer groups said yes, ISPs said no).

Providers and consumer groups also disagreed on whether labels should include information about the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and more.

After a year of debate, the FCC published rules in November that require providers to display broadband labels at the point of sale and in full on their websites, with information on prices (including bundled services, introductory rates and fees), performance (typical speed and latency), data allowances and more.

Figure 1: A sample of the new FCC broadband nutrition label.
(Click here to see the label design in full. Source: FCC.)

The FCC also decided against requiring labels for "grandfathered" plans, and in favor of machine-readable formats and ACP disclosures. It reserved the reliability metric debate for a later date.

Labels coming... soon

So when will consumers start seeing broadband labels?

Not yet. The FCC said it will "announce the effective date of the label after it has completed necessary next steps." That includes submitting the rules to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review under the Paperwork Reduction Act.

Depending on how long that takes, we may see broadband nutrition labels in the wild by mid-to-late 2023. As per the new rules, providers will have up to six months to begin displaying their labels, or up to a year for smaller ISPs. The rollout timeline was important to industry groups like ACA Connects, which argued in filings that its providers would need at least a year to comply.

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— Nicole Ferraro, editor, Light Reading, and host of "​​The Divide" podcast.