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Verizon Throttled Fire Department's 'Unlimited' Data During Calif. Wildfire (arstechnica.com)
Verizon Wireless's throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules. From a report: "County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services." Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
"The Internet has become an essential tool in providing fire and emergency response, particularly for events like large fires which require the rapid deployment and organization of thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines, aircraft, and bulldozers," Bowden wrote. Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more, according to Bowden's declaration and emails between the fire department and Verizon that were submitted as evidence.
"The Internet has become an essential tool in providing fire and emergency response, particularly for events like large fires which require the rapid deployment and organization of thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines, aircraft, and bulldozers," Bowden wrote. Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more, according to Bowden's declaration and emails between the fire department and Verizon that were submitted as evidence.
Did they have a business plan with a guarantee of service or a consumer plan?
Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services.
The moment Verizon staff deliberately stepped over that line: it should have resulted in all their spectrum licenses and their FCC Telecoms license being placed in jeapordy. At the very least there should be a billion$ lawsuit for obstructing first responders.
Even 'unlimited' data packages often will throttle if you exceed a certain amount. This is clearly stated in the agreement. This is a non-story and should not be a surprise to anyone.
Must have been some of the nice, 4K multi-angle stuff.
What the hell?!?!
That or they'll have died in forest fires.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So the Fire Department is also confused what "unlimited" means. How does any expect consumers to understand?
That or they'll have died in forest fires.
True, and thus it is essential to not put out any forest fires because that would be interfering with the invisible and infallible hand of the free market aa it guides the fire extinguisher market to ever greater profits.
Throttling after using a certain amount of data happened while net neutrality was in effect. This is a false correlation meant to get those who don't think to come running with torches and pitchforks.
Looks to me like after they hit the 25GB cap, every single bit was delivered at the same (degraded) speed.
this is what fixed 5G will be like get a dish or cable if you want TV!
Emergency management operations frequently run on the assumption that regular communications no longer function in the event of an emergency. Why was that not the case here?
Weren't wireless carriers throttling 'unlimited' accounts before the net neutrality change? I thought they were unrelated.
love is just extroverted narcissism
What it would be like it the Fire Department refused to put out any fires on Verizon property until Verizon paid them more money.
Translation: We made the decision to save money by using the internet for critical emergency services. Instead of paying for the bandwidth that we might someday need, we chose to keep it cheap. Now it turns out that due to this poor (and stupid) planning on our part, we can't fulfill our mission, and we want someone else to pay to fix it.
The REP went into sales mode as well pay more + likely get locked into a long term deal as well. To get your speed back.
Verizon Wireless's throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.
Slashdot has really gone down hill. Even the people running this site no longer appear to understand what is or isn't Net Neutrality.
What happened here is a shame, but the fire company's data plan has nothing to do with NN.
Clearly, VZN shouldn't be hindering Public Safety connections.
But this is the opposite of Net Neutrality. What is needed here are in fact tiers. The highest tier is Network Management, but this is a minuscule amount of traffic and typically OOB (but that traffic has to flow somehow and they aren't running OOB-only fibers between towers). Next, a Public Safety tier that should always have priority over non-PS traffic up to their purchased throughput. Then, the rest can slug it out with contention and "fairness" rules that doesn't allow any single type of traffic and/or source/destination starve out other traffic.
We have this with traditional voice calls via the Government Emergency Telecommunication Service (GETS) which allow Public Safety to preempt other calls during a crisis, and we should have the same for Internet traffic - or they shouldn't use the Internet but instead have private networks build adjacent to the Internet (but no doubt using the same cell towers and backhaul). But you have to have GETS service on a per-line basis, and you pay per-call when using GETS. It's not important until it is.
We faced the same issue with emergency response when I was at a sister agency to CalFire. They advertise and sold the state on unlimited data on their mobile hotspots, etc and then capped it at 25 gigs a month. I just rant multiple devices as necessary. Its a crock really.
Those currently in charge of this administration simply do not care about their own rules. Not while they're trying to make sure all of their buddies are as rich as possible.
I can hear the response from the Faux news already: Who cares if a few firemen (Heroes!) lose their lives, that's what they signed up for. Who cares if a few people lose their homes and possessions? Don't they have insurance and shouldn't they have moved to get out of the way of these sorts of disasters?
All the hard working folks at Verizon are trying to do is make a profit in a very competitive market. Why do you hate America's hard working telecommunications business community so much? Are you some kind of Socialist or something?
Verizon does not give a fuck about anyone. They have some of the worst customer service in existence. At least now they trained the staff to be polite when they tell you to fuck off.
- buy new iphone
- right away notice iphone has very very slow download speeds
- troubleshoot for hours with vz
- days later phone wont even turn on
- take back to VZ and they insist on charging me fee for restocking
- call VZ help desk and haggle with them, they eventfully refund 50% of the fee
Verizon is great if you never ever ever need any customer service.
A truly neutral network would not give firefighter traffic ANY priority over other traffic. To ask for such priority is to be a hypocrite. This request by the fire fighters, at best, is an COUNTER example of what "Network Neutrality" means.
Oh, and the issue of exceeding a data cap on your network plan is not the same as network neutrality.
burn down Verizon headquarters.
Whatabout how poorly CA has managed it's forests and water, if not for that none of this would have happened. Everyone knows Verizon is just being scapegoated to cover up for the failed socialist state that is California. Next time sell that lumber to profit and save the cost of these easily preventable bigly expensive forest fires. Individuals effected should sue the state for gross negligence. #MAGA
$99.99 for the first 20GB and $8 per gigabyte thereafter. WOW that just sucks
I mean, they hit a cap and their service was degraded. This has literally nothing to do with net neutrality, and this is a big part of the reason that those of us who want NN have a bigger hill to climb. Other proponents of NN don't have a clue as to what they're actually fighting for.
I'm not arguing one way or another for what actually happened here, just pointing out that it's unrelated to NN.
Do you have ESP?
How about some truth in advertising?
Any service that is subject to data caps, throttling, etc. should not be called "unlimited".
Unlimited: not limited; unrestricted; unconfined. https://www.dictionary.com/bro...
My home internet is a paltry 20Mb DSL, but it is full speed 24x7. That's what I call "unlimited".
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Those currently in charge of this administration simply do not care about their own rules.
First, they are the rules of the previous administration. Second, they care enough to get rid of them.
You may not agree with the administration, but that is how executive rules/regulations work. One executive makes them and another can change or abolish them. If you don't like that possibility, then you need legislation. But that would require actual work and not just political posturing. It has been so long since Congress passed a meaningful piece of legislation that had a decent amount of bi-partisan involvement and support that it is somewhat embarrassing. The last one that springs to mind is the PATRIOT act, but then...well.
Not while they're trying to make sure all of their buddies are as rich as possible.
Huh? I don't see this sort of thing happening. What I do continue to see is massive government spending which tends to mostly benefit a few very large defense, technology, and finance firms. But then, that is not really any different than it was in the Obama administration, or the Bush administration, or the Clinton administration, etc.
>"Verizon Wireless's throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules."
Um, this has absolutely nothing to do with net neutrality. It does have to do with the definition of "unlimited data", but they were not throttling based on where the data was going....
Remember that time when you said you would go back in time to shoot hitler?
Well. It is time for a black american nra member to take the head.
he has to be black, since a blanco would be seen as possible russian agent.
he has to be american, so no foreign nation can be accused. (not that that would stop anyone from doing so.... see JFK)
and he has to be an nra member.
Make it so !
I volunteer as a first responder and we get priority access to the network in an emergency (https://www.firstnet.com/plans and https://www.firstnet.gov/) This includes "First Priority and Preemption - priority access to the domestic AT&T 4G LTE network" The real story should be asking why they don't have access to this program
Legislation doesn't solve the problem, the executive still has to act, the courts have to rule, and yes, the legislature can repeal or rewrite laws.
Besides, my question is why hasn't the legislature done something? Oh wait.
Throttling is not about neutrality, it is about congestion. There is not enough internet pipe to give everyone unlimited everything at maximum speed. There just isn't. Deal with it.
The firefighters are to blame, if the facts reported in TFA are, indeed, facts:
The firefighters f-ed up. They knew — at least, on June 29th, what will automatically happen to their connection. That they didn't change their subscription by July 27, when the Mendocino fire started, is nobody else's fault but their own. Spending tens of thousands on all of that firefighting equipment, they can't spend extra $60 for the truly unlimited data-plan?
Maybe, they expected the company to give them freebies, the way smaller business may be bullied into giving. Didn't work...
What does any of this have to do with "net neutrality" remains a mystery...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Firefighter traffic is prioritizing tcp ip of a protocol, say for emergency service, over some dumb torrent download. *traffic type prioritization* has NEVER been about net neutrality. Why that crop up again and again I am beginning to suspect either people are dumb do not do research or are paid off. Look net neutrality is about not having traffic from amazon prime video throttled because verizon has a concurring service or they want amatzon to pay more, while they don't throttle say netflix *for the SAME protocol*. That is neutrality : neutrality toward the sending and receiving entity. Protocol can still be prioritized. To take your firefight example again, net neutrality is about not having BMW prioritized of a private person given priority over a volvo of another person. It has NEVER been about "not" prioritizing firefighter over private car. In fact from the start it was recognized that prioritizing protocol in a neutral manner (so ignoring who send/who receive) is fine.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
at that level of wealth they typically have their own private security, fire and health services. One of the problems with modern capitalism is that the ultra wealthy have built their own economy. It doesn't matter to them if the commons goes to hell anymore.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Verizon probably broke some laws here, but you could not really expect them to have any plans in place for such an outcome.
It is the Fire Departments fault for using a residential level internet service for system critical infrastructure.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Is Verizon challenging Comcast for the title of "most hated company"?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Ham radio provides support to emergency services through SHARES, NIMS, ARES, and RACES during disaster using 1200 bps. Now I'll grant that over-the-air mapping like Google Maps isn't going to work through a tiny pipe like that.
Considering dispatch, mapping, tactical comms (generally on radios and not on phones) I suspect without information, just thinking of how people operate, that emergency services personnel are using "free" publicly paid for phones for personal high bandwidth applications (Netflix anyone? Amazon Prime? YouTube?). I can't think of any other way to hit business throttling thresholds.
Has anyone seen any logs anywhere that shows mission-related data at the levels that hit throttling?
Bill Gates is a communist -- he's just more equal than the rest of us.
All those folks at Verizon that extorted Cal Fire in fighting the largest fire in California History are CRIMINALS and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the laws.
Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more
That's a really nice fire you've got there, shame if something were to happen to it.
Wait, WHAT? You want it to go out? Juuust a minute then.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
...by helping to burn California to the ground, by any means necessary.
Time to remind everyone that socialism is capitalism in which senior government officials are monopoly owners.
And they wont provide people with free anything once they gain those positions. Free Media? Traitors, except the state owned press. Healthcare? A useless expense, ration it out. Decent education? Another expense, a waste of money. A presidential palace? Now thatâ(TM)s needed for national pride. And monuments. We definitely need those.
I've point out the more obvious question which should have been asked. Why was a consumer network used for emergency services? Think of it as the difference between an ambulance ferrying one to the hospital, and a Uber vehicle.
Anti-trump: OMG this is because of net neutrality! trumps fault! rabble rabble rabble!
Pro-trump: Weren't you guys just arguing that private companys can do what they want with their service?
Other: Nobody pissed at the state/city/local govt that cut fire department funds to the point the fire department has to use a SHITTY CONSUMER PLAN rather than something good and reliable...
Also nobody pissed at those same state/local govt people for not preparing for this years fire season. again.
Also nobody pissed at those same people for not allowing controlled burns because MUH GLOBAL WARMING! again.
Also nobody pissed building and zoning codes were not changed to deal with increased fire risks of the area. AGAIN!
That or they'll have died in forest fires.
Can't cancel the auto payment if you're dead!
Which part of the agreement did Verizon violate? Sounds like the government failed to get the kind of coverage they needed and are now blaming the provider for not giving it to them for free.
According to TFA, they did get special consideration: "public safety customers have access to plans that do not have data throughput limitations".
The department just chose not to buy such a plan...
In a case of emergency, some human brain somewhere should have fired a couple of neurons and decided that :
Okay, maybe given the circumstances, it won't be bad to override the normal behaviour of the system and make sure that the emergency services get the communications means they might need to handle to emergency
Though, depending on the way the company is organized, it might happen that the only guy with the power to take such a decision was busy vacationing on his yacht.
Or the (IT) guy with the practical capability of flipping the correct switch to make it happen would have had his pants sued for breach of whatever protocol.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
this is what fixed 5G will be like get a dish or cable if you want TV!
I live in the sticks, behind hills, where I can't get a TV signal, you insensitive clod! So I have a little satellite dish, and get 20 MB/sec from Exede. The latency is notable (~1 second) but I can at least stream video.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Verizon is owned by the same people starting the fires. Net Neutrality is a plot to put the entire internet under government censorship. The leftist California government is going to be the next entity to burn. And burn. And burn.
Can't have the FIRE DEPARTMENT HOGGING THE BANDWIDTH for something pesky like, oh, a FIRE.
Some places nothing works but Verizon.
Yay for a free and open market, except where phones are concerned.
Many providers provide plans like this and have for as long as I can remember. The repeal of the misclassification of internet providers (also nothing to do with net neutrality in case you haven't bothered to read that) has had absolutely no impact on there provider's policies.
It's fascinating to see the vast majority of people siding with Verizon and blaming the Fire Department for poor planning. I would imagine a similar level of outrage would be directed at the fire department if it were found to be using public money on overpriced data plans that were sized for projected worst-case data consumption rather than actual month-on-month consumption - together with accusations that all the firefighters are doing is streaming Netflix, as people can't imagine any other legitimate need for the amount of data consumed. In a normal functioning society, I would expect the fire department to pay a competitive rate that reflects their standard consumption patterns in line with reasonable public expenditure, with the caveat that in the case this is exceeded for a legitimate public safety purpose (e.g. an emergency response), the amount overshot would be subject to its own costing mechanism and invoiced after the fact, rather than allowing a lapse in service to put lives at risk.
While I appreciate that Verizon does have these types of accounts available for emergency responders and public service providers, I find the attitude that it's ok to gouge them on pricing simply to toggle a throttle vs. no-throttle flag on their account absurd. On the other hand, I can't say I really understand the fire department's net neutrality position, either.
I really hope it's not a case of "we're on the wrong type of account, but I can't get this $12 / year approved to fix it".
If you're on the wrong type of account then fix it. It's not ok to be on the wrong type just because it's a sliver cheaper and "functions well enough" most of the time.
That said, it is very wrong (yet not uncommon) for a company to charge public-serving agencies more just because their services are more sensitive.
That $12 doesn't seem like a lot until you add up every fire dept in the country, then maybe ambulance, police, school, etc. That $2 is big bucks for Verizon.
I refuse to sign
He looked from prisoner to worker, and from worker to prisoner, and from prisoner to worker again; but already it was impossible to say which was which
Apologies to Eric Blair.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
where prisoners have to Unionize...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Sounds like a poorly written program.
In the best world, yes, it would have been good if the software was better written.
In the real world, you deal with what you have in your hands. When in the middle of an emergency, there's not much free time to try to rewrite a better software.
Deciding if maybe changing data plan would be a good idea, and maybe improving the software based on what was learned during this emergency, should be best left for after the emergency, once you have some time to deal with it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]