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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Ok then - What exactly in the rules that were repealed, would have prevented what happened? Since obviously you have read them and are familiar with what was repealed, I mean it would be crazy to be upset about the loss of something you had never read and didn't even understand, right?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 If I am silent, well, perhaps you should try to answer the question - what in the rules repealed would have prevented a cell provider from throttling cellular data services?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
Proving once again that people have no clue what net neutrality really means.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
I believe them. Its a mistake due to the bad PR it caused.
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 ?
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.
...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.