In December 2019, the U.S. Senate passed a law that prevented ISPs from charging customers “rental fees” for equipment that customers own themselves. This was a common practice by ISPs like Frontier Communications, which charged users a $10 “rental fee” for equipment that was either never used nor delivered.
The law was supposed to take effect in April 2020. However, the FCC ruled on April 3 to extend the deadline until December 20. Under the law, the FCC has the ability to trigger a 6-month extension if it seems that ISPs cannot comply in time, which it chose to do. Frontier recently filed for bankruptcy but will continue to collect fees in the meantime.
