Slashdot Mirror
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.
What the hell?!?!
I'm hoping firefighters throughout the US keep that in mind when a Verizon building catches fire. "WEll, you know, we do have to prioritize our resources. Can't fight every fire..."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That or they'll have died in forest fires.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
s/Verizon building/Verizon executive's home/
No, that 's not mean and vindictive. Nothing prevents them switching to an alternative firefighting provider.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
The objection is to including the word "unlimited" in the headline as though that is a guarantee of speed. I get it, this is an important story and you also want to live in a world where cheap wireless broadband with no throttling is an inalienable right. But these are two different things. A less eye-catching headline might read "Verizon puts lives at risk by sticking to terms of service. "
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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.
Let's not do that. Firefighters *must* respond to every fire.
It would be more appropriate to limit the amount of bandwidth (number of firefighters or trucks) responding to a fire. "Sorry, your plan includes only two unlimited firefirghters in a pickup truck, and they're doing everything possible within reasonable safety limits."
Got marshmallows?
$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....
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
We can send you a guy on a moped with a couple of jerrycans full of piss. Next Tuesday at the absolute latest.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Fill in the blank: Verizon <BLANKED> the fire departments transfer speed.
It starts with an "L"
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
To be fair, one of the fire fighters should have a super soaker
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!
You will get Unlimited Firefighting.... by one person with a watering can.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
We were able to rescue your workers and avoid the flames from reaching any property not belonging to Verizon, unfortunately we were unable to keep the main building from burning to the ground. Our water supply was throttled, it seems, and we had to prioritize resources.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fill in the blank: Verizon <BLANKED> the fire departments transfer speed.
"automatically adjusted according to contract"
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Sorry, you are over your monthly Hydrant limit, you will get *Unlimited* water usage for the remainder of the month from this kinked garden hose.
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.
You either flunked reading or the alphabet.
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.
You either flunked reading or the alphabet.
Obviously your sentence was constructed for your predetermined outcome. The issue is that Verizon did nothing after the Fire Department selected the wrong plan for mission critical service. Yes, Verizon should have done more for the public good. But read TFA. The FD was trying to take the cheap route and knew it, and now they're deflecting blame.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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?
Regardless of morality or ethics or terms of the contract, they undeniably LIMITED the bandwidth (they even call it that themselves). That is, they LIMITED the unlimited data. The contract may very well have said they could, but their marketing lies it's ass off. A reasonable person would call that plan LIMITED.
That's why professionals, when selecting a vendor plan for a mission critical service, are going to do their research and talk to an enterprise rep, and then pay for the level of service that meets their needs. Also, this has nothing to do with Net Neutrality. This kind of cap and throttle plan existed before NN, during it, and exists now.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
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 never claimed this was a Net Neutrality issue. I claimed it's massive advertising draud.
I'm hoping firefighters throughout the US keep that in mind when a Verizon building catches fire. "WEll, you know, we do have to prioritize our resources. Can't fight every fire..."
I'm hoping firefighters throughout the US actually selected the data plan specificly available for emergency services, unthrottled, and heavily discounted, rather than saving a few dollars a month to get a consumer internet connection instead.
That or they'll have died in forest fires.
Can't cancel the auto payment if you're dead!
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.'"
Can't have the FIRE DEPARTMENT HOGGING THE BANDWIDTH for something pesky like, oh, a FIRE.
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 ]
Unlimited Bandwidth does not exist, and if you understood how the internet works you would know this. Unlimited refers to the Data, not the speed. They were still able to use the data, just at slower speeds, therefor the Unlimited Data still stands. I have personally never seen an Unlimited Bandwidth plan advertised ever.
I understand how the internet works just fine. If YOU understood it, you would know that there's a difference between the natural limits of a technology, the limits of a particular service, and imposed limits because of going over a particular threshold. For example, an Unlimited T1 will never go faster than a T1, but you won't get billed extra or have it slow down to 100K
Any person with a decent command of the English language would interpret "unlimited" in this context to mean the service at the end of the month is the same as at the beginning of the month no matter how much data has been used. If you have to watch that you don't use too much in order to avoid a penalty (performance of monetary), it is *L*I*M*I*T*E*D*.
Except those of us who live in reality and read the binding agreements in the contracts we sign, that say after in my case 23GB(sprint) I get kicked down to 3G speeds when on overloaded towers. It would be nice to not have that an issue, cause i would use my phone for home internet because the speed increase would be enough to offset my issue with the latency spikes. But if that was the case I'm sure I wouldn't be the only person to do so, which would PROBABLY make all cell phone use unusable and bring back dropped calls. There is a reason these limits are implemented the way they are. There is one way to fix that, put a cell tower in everybodys back yard. Yea I'm sure that will go over well with everybody. Plus the amount of electricity they use. As I previously said. If you understood how the internet works...
If only you would read my posts as carefully as you read the binding agreements. I am talking about the *A*D*V*E*R*T*I*S*I*N*G*. You know, the part where they try to induce you to come in and buy stuff?
All they have to do to be honest is quit calling limited bandwidth unlimited.
Well good luck with that. Once again, I prefer Real Life to the land of Make Believe. Advertisers are some of the worst people around, I don't expect very much more from them.
That's why I would like for the FTC to actually enforce truth in advertising. It's actually necessary if we are to have a functioning market economy. The lack of such enforcement is why the U.S. has so many unhealthy markets. In turn, that is one reason so many millennials have become skeptical of Capitalism.
I 100% agree.