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Fire Department Rejects Verizon's 'Customer Support Mistake' Excuse For Throttling (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A fire department whose data was throttled by Verizon Wireless while it was fighting California's largest-ever wildfire has rejected Verizon's claim that the throttling was just a customer service error and "has nothing to do with net neutrality." The throttling "has everything to do with net neutrality," a Santa Clara County official said. Verizon yesterday acknowledged that it shouldn't have continued throttling Santa Clara County Fire Department's "unlimited" data service while the department was battling the Mendocino Complex Fire. Verizon said the department had chosen an unlimited data plan that gets throttled to speeds of 200kbps or 600kbps after using 25GB a month but that Verizon failed to follow its policy of "remov[ing] data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations." "This was a customer support mistake" and not a net neutrality issue, Verizon said. "Verizon's throttling has everything to do with net neutrality -- it shows that the ISPs will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety," County Counsel James Williams said on behalf of the county and fire department. "That is exactly what the Trump Administration's repeal of net neutrality allows and encourages."
I'm a net neutrality proponent and ... this doesn't seem to have anything to do with net neutrality.
Sure it does, or rather, the lack of net neutrality
Ok then - What exactly in the rules that were repealed, would have prevented what happened? Since obviously you have read them and are familiar with what was repealed, I mean it would be crazy to be upset about the loss of something you had never read and didn't even understand, right?
I'll respond to any post that actually provides a real answer. If I am silent, well, perhaps you should try to answer the question - what in the rules repealed would have prevented a cell provider from throttling cellular data services?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...not a customer support mistake. Customer support *DOES NOT DICTATE* throttling rules. Verizon does. Take responsibility for your actions and stop blaming customer service for everything. They are enforcing the rules which you implemented!
Proving once again that people have no clue what net neutrality really means.
Saying this has nothing to do with net neutrality and having the belief that the repeal of NN was one of the worst things for the free internet are not mutually exclusive.
What are you talking about? Firefighting was originally a private enterprise negotiated on the spot.
That's the way it should be.
Verizon yesterday acknowledged that it shouldn't have continued throttling Santa Clara County Fire Department's "unlimited" data service while the department was battling the Mendocino Complex Fire.
Or at any other time, really, not just while battling the fire -- unless Verizon is going to monitor the activity of the fire department and throttle their service whenever the department isn't fighting a fire...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I agree, firefighters should bill your insurance like the paramedics do.
Now what should we do about our socialized roads?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I run an IT Department for a City on the West Coast. Verizon has throttled "unlimited" plans for over a year now. It's a common pain. The biggest problem we're running into is dispatch. Old text based dispatch systems have been replaced with GIS based systems consuming significantly more bandwidth. Add citizens wanting dashcams and body cams and you're easily way over the 25Gb limit.
Historically, Verizon has been deeply embedded in our infrastructure due to our need for coverage, and Verizon had the best. Enter a new game change, AT&T and FirstNet (1N). ( https://www.firstnet.gov/ ) , AT&T has been pouring billions it infrastructure to support 1N. I predict within 18 months, Verizon not only will lose it's stranglehold on municipal communications, but virtually every municipality will jump to AT&T. Stories like this will only accelerate the change.
Well considering the huge amount of fees I pay per year for my cars plus the continuous raising of taxe on gas (in CA), I'd like to thing that road infrastructure is where that money is going... but I think we all know that isnt the case.
There are a LOT of rural fire districts across the US operating on a subscription basis. No pay in advance, no fire put out. It's been this way for a long time.
It's never happened to me personally, and it takes two hands to count the number of times they've made an error in their favor (speaking about AT&T). How odd...
There was this one time I told sprint I was quitting my job at Radio Shack and to change my plan to a stanard, non employee one (the Unlimited everything and $50 store download credit a month for $25 back in 2006) and they kept the plan rolling for a year before I swapped providers due to crappy coverage.
But that doesnt counter all the shit I've had to deal with other carriers.
It's a fire department, it will always be in a emergency situation. How will Verizon really know if they have an emergency within a couple minutes? They should have a completely different plan that never throttles, ever. They shouldn't have chosen a plan that throttles, and Verizon shouldn't have given them one that does either.
This is stupidity on both sides, though more on Verizon for enabling this in the first place, and I don't see how this is a net neutrality issue.
Iit has to do with the fire department not paying the 2USD per month to get complete unlimited data and ignoring the warning they got.
It has zilch to do with Net Meutrality, BLM, ebonics, Trump or any other word you think is in fashion right now.
Just because you do a great thing does not mean you get a free ride. Next they are upset they need to pay for all other goods they use.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Gas taxes and other user fees combined pay less than half of the cost of the roads. In California we heavily subsidize the roads with sales taxes such as Measure M in Los Angeles, TransNet in San Diego, and Prop K in San Francisco.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I didnt think it would cover everything, but that little is kinda surprising. I found this PDF about the CA Transportation budget right now and it does have some interesting data on it.
There's no such thing as "free", someone pays for everything. If a communication provider allows municipalities to use their services at no fee to the municipalities, those providers will charge other users to make up the difference. Just like taxes and Levies are placed on the properties of citizens in the area to cover these communication costs. In the end, someone pays. It's just "how".
Which goes back to something Iâ(TM)ve said for years. The spectrum Verizon licensed is the publicâ(TM)s property. We granted them the right to use it. If we feel they are not behaving responsibly we should have the power to take it back and prohibit them from using it for a period of time.
Everyone saying things like "what are the firefighters doing with data" needs to read over this paper. Also the book Geospatial Information Technology for Emergency Response for those who have access check libraries, others can use a preview to get some idea of the content.
Everything soldiers need from data applies here. Real-time collection of data about exactly where the firefighters are, what areas are burning, the status of efforts to extinguish fire, all must be transmitted. After processing on the office end, data sent back to responders in the field must pass through the same channel. This includes data about the direction and behavior of the fire in extreme granularity actionable from the ground, along with orders coordinating disparate units. If they use any sort of secured VOIP system then long range voice communications also use data. The old slashdot would understand all of this by default.
Why aren't vital services like this getting free unlimited, unthrottled service by law?
E Proelio Veritas.
The argument the ISPs made was that they need to be able throttle traffic based on who it was to and what it was for so that they could make sure the most important traffic got priority and would always trump the lower class data. Their promise to emergency services (based on the article on this issue AND supported by statements and previous actions from Verizon) was that your emergency data usage would NEVER be impeded. It seems that Verizon does not have the infrastructure in place to implement their data tiering that they are implementing (again emergency services will never be impeded), which means you are a schmuck to pay a premium for the faster service and service guarantees.
Second, every one needs to stop comparing the plan process the Fire department was paying for that one SIM card to their own data plans. Their monthly bill is probably in the thousands, if not tens of thousands and as such they have access to a whole bunch of tiers and plans that consumers do not have. Verizon came out and said they (Verizon) had misrepresented the terms of the data agreements to the department AND they had failed to make sure that the emergency services tier of data was not impeded.
>at cost
Pay attention. Your "someone pays" is indeed being provided.
"Overpays" (profit on top) is what gets removed. It would be a legal offense to do what has always been an ethical one - to rent seek on a crisis, like a mining company trying to pad their pockets during WWII.
In practice your "charge other uses" would happen anyway, of course. What am I gonna do, tell the yacht loan to wait a month? I'll "find the money", you're right.
This isn't Net Neutrality issue, but is a utility vs commercial service issue. Fire, police and other emergency services phone data networks should NOT be on a commercial service but on a municipal utility service dedicated for just that purpose. Such a dedicated service should probably be maintained at a state level and the connected to a different network. Allowing emergency services traffic to be carried by a standard commercial carrier is a short sighted and stupid mistake. Police and fire communication is on a separate radio band and forbidden for general use why would a new medium not be the same ?
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Why is this being posted yet AGAIN to Slashdot?
>" The throttling "has everything to do with net neutrality," a Santa Clara County official said."
No it does NOT. Never has and never will, no matter how many times "Clara County" wants to say it. No matter how you try to twist it, or phrase it, or try to pin it on Trump, or whine, or cry. This is just data throttling, which nearly EVERY ISP does. It is normal, it does not discriminate in any way WHERE you get the data from or send the data to. It is determined ONLY by a total measured cap.
Now, Clara Country might have been stupid enough to not READ or UNDERSTAND the terms of the contract they signed and later not like it. Or perhaps there really was a mistake made by Verizon in putting them on a "unlimited" plan instead of a measured plan. But stop trying to make this some example of net neutrality.
Since throttling essential utilities is fair game according to Verizon, I propose fire departments throttle the water from fire hydrants near Verizon properties. Who's with me?
No, not true. They BID for the spectrum and won. This has been going on for a while and has
generated billions of dollars for the US Government.
Google "spectrum auctions" if you don't believe me.
Democrat: A bunch of guys that get together to decide what they are going to do with YOUR money.
The malice is against the customer. The stupidity was failing to disguise it in situations where it could be exposed.
Hell the farmer's water has been throttled for years by L.A.
Policy is what guides an organizations' internal procedures. How it interacts with entities external to the organization is guided by laws and by contracts. Verizon's policy is for the birds when it comes to how it justifies its actions to outsiders. A Fire Department should have known better and it should have had a contract which stipulated this eventuality. If they didn't, they should be suing their lawyers for malpractice.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Repeat after me: throttling YOUR use when you exceed your agreed cap has nothing to do with net neutrality.
Net neutrality is about throttling a video web site to you, outside their agreement with you. (And especially in demanding a cut of what you pay that video site or they'll crappify the video you see.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
and will say it again. . . .
Every time a company gets caught doing something stupid, they never accept responsibility for it. They just have a junior programmer, or software " bug " or whatever ready to go as the designated scapegoat.
Net neutrality says that you cannot prioritize traffic to site A over that for site B for economic reasons alone.
Net neutrality would have done nothing about this.
The regulations proposed for net neutrality, some of which were written by the cable industry, would not have helped.
The only thing that will help is having more competition in the ISP world and that, ironically, is limited by regulations.
Alternative Right.
But, don't let the liberal press, socialist, and other non capitalist tell you that. These companies built the internet connections, it's a business and they should run it. The government should butt out!
...but I believe that all communications providers should required to furnish all services to Police, Fire and other Emergency Services at cost.
I can just see it now, like in the Transformers movie where the soldier is trying to get through to HQ:
"Before I connect your call, can I talk to you about upgrading your cell phone plan?"
Look, I'm a stone-cold Capitalist Pig(TM) at heart for sure, but...just...Damn!
How would you like it if the government forced you to service its "needs"...at cost? How would you like it if the government forced you to give up profitable contracts...to service its "needs"....at cost?
*snicker*
Oh wait, the government already does...every pay cycle, every quarter, and every April 15th.
There shouldn't be an exception for government, on any level or for any reason, which doesn't apply to civilians. The fire dept has a safety concern, there are lots of potential safety concerns which don't get helped by simply making a blanket "don't throttle the fire dept bandwidth" but do get fixed by "don't throttle anyone's bandwidth." Net neutrality however is about not charging different amounts or supplying different bandwidths for different services - so what they're actually advocating for here is not having net neutrality.
How is any carrier able to claim that their data plan is "unlimited", when it's throttled to dialup speeds after only 25GB? And why did ANY public service agency buy such a plan? Penny-wise and pound-foolish on CalFire's side, and nearly criminal negligence from Verizon. Of course, from Verizon I would not have expected any better. I had a cell plan from them for two very long and frustrating years, and switched long ago. Now I'm in T-Mobile, and love it.
Fire department tried to save a few bucks and now wants to blame Verizon for their poor planning. If your going to build a safety network, know what you're building it upon. OT: Call this ignorant, but when the f&^% did you need high bandwidth to fight a fire? If their tools are built upon the requirement of high cellular bandwidth in a low cellular bandwidth world, someone isn't thinking straight and should be fired. As far as Verizon not switching off the restriction, these things happen when humans are involved. 4G airspace is finite - this isn't new. Verizon and other carriers need to put these 'tricks' in place to keep the network running reasonably well for everyone until something better comes along (5G). Remember when we thought 3G was reasonable fast, then it wasn't?? 4G was the answer, now due to explosive use of bandwidth, it too has it's limits. 5G will be that way one day too. More, more, more.
...why the hell were the Fire Service using an insufficient data plan that would leave them liable to run out of data in an emergency and why did they not have a backup connection available for that circumstance, which they were clearly aware of (given that there was an expected mechanism in place to remove it in an emergency)?
And what's more, how does that even work? Surely, by nature of their work, it's always used in emergencies - them being, you know, the emergency services - so they should never run out of data? Unless of course, it wasn't just being used in emergencies...
You can describe the wireless industry as a lot of things, but "unfettered capitalism" isn't one of them. Do you have any idea how many rules, regulations and regulators at various levels of government wireless carriers are involved with?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
"it shows that the ISPs will act in their economic interests, even at the expense of public safety," County Counsel James Williams said. compare that to (just cut one zero from the percent numbers): "Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated." T. J. Dunning, cited by Karl Marx
This was a question that struck me too. Surly Verizon can configure the account to never be throttled. You would think that the Fire Service wouldn't want to have to call someone during a crisis to increase their data plan. So while it does look like Verizon screwed up by failing to remove the cap upon request, the Fire Service shares some blame by allowing the cap to be there in the first place. Lessons learned all around.
While I'm personally not a fan of Verizon and the whole practice of throttling on "unlimited plans", this really does feel more like the Fire Department bureaucracy trying to pass blame because their acquisitions office screwed up and bought the wrong product. I can easily imagine what happened now, some contracting officer thinking, "You know what, I don't need a government plan, I'll just get this consumer plan here that's a couple bucks cheaper a month. They're not going to need all that data; they'd probably just use it to stream Netflix at home or something."
To be fair, just for PR sakes, let alone public good, Verizon should have immediately lifted the cap versus trying to negotiate while the entire state was on fire. Though that we could also chalk up to Verizon's own bureaucracy...
When Harvey hit Rockport, AT&T cut all caps loose, supplying support and discounts to the hurricane victims of the area. But their cell coverage is still poor, if not worse after the storm hit. The reason behind this is the only cell tower providing service in a 50 square mile area is a 200 footer that went down during the storm and has yet to be replaced. The permits with the FCC have been cleared, but no action has yet to be taken by the owner of the tower, which is not AT&T, Someone needs to dig the spurs into the fools and get something taller up than a 50 foot surrogate tower that is not doing what it's supposed to be doing.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Net Neutrality is slowing down certain things and/or demanding money from the cause of the bandwidth usage. This is slowing down everything as a blanket solution to them crowding the tower for everyone else.
Perhaps the question they should be asking is why the hell were the Fire Service using an insufficient data plan that would leave them liable to run out of data in an emergency
They weren't. They were operating under a cap that is sufficient for normal operations, as in the day-to-day responding to a house fire and such.
In addition, the contract says that if there is a fire emergency, the FD will notify Verizon and Verizon will turn off the cap.
The first two parts happened, and Verizon didn't turn off the cap. Thus Verizon violated their contract with the fire department.
And then people would complain about just how expensive the Fire Department's data plan is, when they normally don't need that much data. So surely they could have a cheaper contract where Verizon would turn off the cap when there was a state of emergency. My tax dollars ar bein wasted!!!!!!!!!!
Calling Verizon when there's a state of emergency isn't actually all that much additional work. That declaration triggers a whole bunch of things, and including "call the phone company" is not a big addition. Verzion just has to actually do what they promised to do in their contract.
Actually, the Fire Department bought a plan with a cap sufficient for normal operations. And the contract also said if a state of emergency was declared, the Fire Department would notify Verizon, and Verizon would lift the cap.
The first two parts happened. The third didn't. Verizon now says they "mistakenly represented the plan" to the city. AKA, lied to the city about the plan.
As for net neutrality, this situation could not have happened if net neutrality was still in-force, because net neutrality was implemented by making Verizon's Internet service a Title II service. Aside from net neutrality, Title II rules also would forbid throttling here.
So when net neutrality was ended by making it a Title III service, the rules changed and throttling could happen.
Reregulate the telcos. And indict, try, convict, and put the CEOs in jail for this reckless endangerment of lives.
And turnover is incredibly high there... which makes it MANAGEMENT's fault. They treat the employees like shit. They don't adequately train them. And then blame the person on the bottom.
Dear Trump supporter,
Fuck off. By you, it's *never* business' fault. Nobody good works for or with the government, and everyone in business is wonderful.
I've *worked* for telcos. Dilbert's PHB is upper management. You, on the other hand, are a sucker or a troll.
Maybe you should get a real job, in the real world.
Yep, most of it is regulatory capture by the industry itself.
That's still not unfettered capitalism. That'd be if we didn't allow the government to have the power to fetter them quite so much, so there was less regulation to capture and less of an ability to prevent competition.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.