| Broadband Labels / Concepts | |
The FCC is requiring broadband labels based on nutrition labels to help consumers quickly and easily compare options and increase the transparency in the industry. For entities serving 100,000 customers or more the labels must be completed by April 10, 2024. For entities serving less than 100,000 customers labels are required on October 10, 2024.The labels must disclose important information about broadband prices, introductory rates, data allowances, and broadband speeds. They must also include links to information about network management practices, discounts (if needed) and privacy policies.
To support this new government mandate, BillMax has implemented a way to create a label for each stand-alone mass-marketed broadband access service plan. These labels are created in Draft mode so that changes can be applied and labels can be previewed. The labels are published when complete into a CSV file as well as a complete file of labels in HTML. The CSV file is to meet the requirement to make the information in the labels machine-readable to enable third parties to easily collect and aggregate data for the purpose of creating comparison-shopping tools for consumers. The HTML file will help enable the labels to be added to a website. BillMax also has a REST API endpoint to retrieve the label for a certain service so the label can be retrieved for an individual customer in an online portal.
If a Service Definition is updated in such a way that a new label is necessary, a new Draft of the label will need to be created. Once the label is published, the original published label remains as an Archived Label to meet the requirements of keeping labels for two years to be given to the FCC if notified or the customer in an online customer portal. Labels will remain in BillMax retrievable based on dates, service definitions, and Virtual Companies.