[1st-mile-nm] CenturyLink Hikes 'Internet Cost Recovery' Fee

[Richard Lowenberg]

CenturyLink Hikes Sneaky 'Internet Cost Recovery' Fee

by Karl Bode
Wednesday Apr 20 2016 10:30 EDT
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/CenturyLink-Hikes-Sneaky-Internet-Cost-Recovery-Fee-136766

One of the most misleading practices in the broadband industry is the 
tactic of adding sneaky, below the line fees to artificially keep the 
advertised rate the same. It's effectively a form of false advertising, 
in that consumers sign up for one rate, then wind up paying 
significantly more after an ISP saddles their bills with various 
nonsensical fees. Many of these fees, like the "regulatory recovery fee" 
or broadcast TV fee are simply the cost of doing business, and are not 
government mandated despite being designed to sound like it.

Given that regulators have turned a blind eye to this practice for 
fifteen years (longer if you're talking about POTS), many companies 
don't even try very hard when trying to make up such fees.

Case in point is CenturyLink, who for a few years now has been charging 
its customers something called an "Internet cost recovery fee." This is 
the explanation for the fee CenturyLink provides over at the CenturyLink 
website:

quote:
This fee helps defray costs associated with building and maintaining 
CenturyLink's High-Speed Internet broadband network, as well as the 
costs of expanding network capacity to support the continued increase in 
customers' average broadband consumption.

The problem is...that's what the rest of your bill is for. Again, all 
CenturyLink is doing is using a misleading fee to artificially keep 
advertised rates low(er). Were regulators doing their jobs this wouldn't 
be allowed. But since they're not, CenturyLink is notifying users that 
it plans to double the fee to $4 starting this month. Not only do such 
fees let ISPs falsely advertise a lower rate, it lets them falsely claim 
that they haven't technically hiked their broadband prices in "x" years.

Such fees also aren't included when calculating international broadband 
price comparisons, meaning that rankings that suggest that Americans pay 
more for broadband than most developed countries -- are actually 
probably low-balling the estimate.

(I now pay $1.99 for this fee, but have not yet seen notice of increase. 
   RL)


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Richard Lowenberg, Executive Director
1st-Mile Institute     505-603-5200
Box 8001, Santa Fe, NM 87504,
rl at 1st-mile.org     www.1st-mile.org
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