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It’s Finally Illegal for ISPs to Charge Rental Fees for Equipment You Own By Ryan Whitwam on December 21, 2020 at 2:01 pm
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Internet service providers (ISPs) in the US have made exploiting customers into an art form. It has long been legal for ISPs to charge you money for equipment that you’ll never use, but thankfully, that is finally changing. A new law went into effect on Sunday that prevents your ISP from making equipment rental fees mandatory.
If you’ve set up internet service in the last few years, you’ll know that Comcast, Frontier, and others try to get you to use their modem-router combo devices. For some people, this is easier to set up and you don’t have to worry about buying an expensive modem of your own up front. However, that $10 monthly fee really adds up, and owning a modem and router will save you money over the long-term. The wireless per
20 December 2020, 7:32 pm EST By
Internet modems and TV broadbands are among the devices that would not charge rental fees anymore after the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA) ended with its six months of extension for leeway. The US Congress law has taken into consideration that people were paying for rental or ownership fees on the devices used to connect to the internet or cable TV.
The good news for all internet and TV broadband cable users is that the leeway has now ended its extension that gave the Internet Service Providers (ISP) more than a year to prepare for the new law. This act would certainly take a huge chunk of users monthly fees and the profits of the ISPs.
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It Is Now Illegal For ISPs To Charge You A Modem Rental Fee By Tyler Lee, on 12/20/2020 16:56 PST
Typically whenever we sign up for an internet plan with an internet service provider (ISP), they will give us a modem to use. This modem is more than capable of getting the job done, but it’s not necessarily the best in terms of speed or coverage, which is why more often than not, a lot of us usually end up upgrading our own equipment.
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However, some ISPs still continue to charge for modem “rental” even if we have our own devices, but the good news is that they will no longer be allowed to do so. In a law that has come into effect on the 20th of December, 2020, the Television Viewer Protection Act will now make it illegal for ISPs and TV providers from charging customers a “rental” fee for equipment that they already own themselves. This includes things like modems and cable boxes.
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Photo: Mandel Ngan, Getty Images
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If you’ve ever wondered why you still have to pay your internet provider rental fees for a modem even after you bought it, I have some good news: A new U.S. law is shutting that shit down from here on out.
As Ars Technica notes, the Television Viewer Protection Act goes into effect starting Dec. 20, which bans broadband and TV providers from charging rental fees for equipment customers own themselves such as modems and cable boxes. The law was approved in December 2019 and was originally set to go into effect on June 20, but Congress authorised the Federal Communications Commission to grant an extension after ISPs argued that the pandemic made the original deadline impractical. Man