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Facing 'Net Neutrality' Criticism, Verizon Suddenly Lifts Data Caps On All Public Safety Workers (siliconvalley.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Verizon testified Friday before a California State Assembly committee about why its "throttling" of county firefighters was completely unrelated to net neutrality. Then they surprised everyone by announcing that they were lifting all data caps on public safety workers with unlimited data plans, including federal justice agencies like the FBI, CIA and Secret Service.
Verizon claimed this was completely unrelated to the fact that 13 California Congressmen are now demanding that the FTC investigate Verizon's throttling of firefighters battling California's 290,692-acre wildfire. "It is unacceptable for communications providers to deceive their customers," the Congressmen wrote, "but when the consumer in question is a government entity tasked with fire and emergency services, we can't afford to wait a moment longer."
Meanwhile, the California Professional Firefighters, which represents more than 30,000 firefighters and emergency personnel, came out in support of a strict new California law that restores net neutrality provisions, saying their group had "come to conclude that if net neutrality is not restored, the effect could be disastrous to the public's safety."
One county fire chief even testified this was the third time in eight months they've been throttled by Verizon.
Verizon claimed this was completely unrelated to the fact that 13 California Congressmen are now demanding that the FTC investigate Verizon's throttling of firefighters battling California's 290,692-acre wildfire. "It is unacceptable for communications providers to deceive their customers," the Congressmen wrote, "but when the consumer in question is a government entity tasked with fire and emergency services, we can't afford to wait a moment longer."
Meanwhile, the California Professional Firefighters, which represents more than 30,000 firefighters and emergency personnel, came out in support of a strict new California law that restores net neutrality provisions, saying their group had "come to conclude that if net neutrality is not restored, the effect could be disastrous to the public's safety."
One county fire chief even testified this was the third time in eight months they've been throttled by Verizon.
Then the caps come back. For now, though, they are on the run. Keep the pressure up, americans!
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Good for them for doing this, but it's worth pointing out that the upcoming FirstNet infrastructure (and AT&T won the contract) should hopefully mitigate the chances of this affecting responders like this again in the years to come.
It was bad (and bad PR) for Verizon to let this happen in the first place; given that alone, hopefully it won't happen again.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It wouldn't be the first time politics caused a change unrelated to the problem. Don't get me wrong, Net Neutrality is the correct path for the internet, but it has nothing to do with throttling when your data runs out.
Well almost nothing, if you could still access Netflix at full rate, while out of data, then yes, that is a Net Neutrality violation.
Overall I'm fine with public safety workers getting no data caps, as long as all providers do it. It just means less taxes being paid to pay the public safety workers cell phone contracts, but possibly higher internet bills to pay for the bandwidth used. In short, it probably doesn't change much, and is probably a small net positive.
"It is unacceptable for communications providers to deceive their customers," the Congressmen wrote, "but when the consumer in question is a government entity tasked with fire and emergency services, we can't afford to wait a moment longer."
Yes we know, you should be ashamed that you deceived yoru citizen customers but HOW DARE you deceive the government or its entities!
Fun fact, had those millions of other "deceptions" been looked at by the government that cares so much we would not need something like this to get our attention. There is a reason why politicians do not really care that much about their voters.
Usage. This isn't a net neutrality issue at all. Local media outlets here picked up the story a few days ago. It wouldn't have any traction there if they couldn't use the term "net neutrality".
The reality of the situation is that the fire departments are solely responsible for ensuring that the equipment and services they require on their rigs are in place. In the case of SCCFD, they had the wrong goddamn plan and/or they failed to understand the terms of the plan. They were (are) public safety plans available from Verizon that exclude throttling. SCCFD did not purchase it. It's their responsibility as much as the hose on the truck is their responsibility.
Beware of the Leopard.
In the case of SCCFD, they had the wrong goddamn plan and/or they failed to understand the terms of the plan. They were (are) public safety plans available from Verizon that exclude throttling. SCCFD did not purchase it.
That's not true. At least not according to a statement made by Verizon at the time this first hit the news.
According to Verizon, *ALL* of their plans include throttling once you hit a certain limit.
Here's what they said in one of their e-mails to the fire department:
" All unlimited data plans offered by Verizon have some sort of data throttling built-in"
You really shouldn't get to advertise " Unlimited " plans, then ( via extra fine print on page 936 of the user agreement )
turn around and throttle the bandwidth into the ground so as to make the entire service completely useless. ( God forbid
you actually USE your " Unlimited " plan as unlimited. )
It's akin to being sold a Ferrari with all that horsepower available to it, but being forced to drive it like a Prius. :|
I also find it amusing that this is only an issue because it's Firefighters. ( Or any profession that the public is constantly :| )
reminded to refer to as " Heroic ". Don't get me started on that one.
Congress could give two shits about Verizon screwing over the general public every day with the very same policies, but if you do it to
$heroic_profession, ( or a Congress type ) all of a sudden it's a big fucking deal and everyone runs in little circles demanding answers.
Volunteer firefighter and programmer.
I believe you and others have been decieved by Verizon.
Fire departments have a cap on monthly useage for normal emergency patterns and non emergency related internet use . IF we watch to much netflix, youtube, send to many emails.... WTFever then we are and should be capped.
But the momemnt we inform the ISP we have a public emergency usage requirement then the ISP is supposed to rip off that cap and give us everything we need until the emergency is over. I beleive that the fire department even mentioned that clause to the verizon rep and in their public information release.
It is effectively an insurance policy that Verizon failed to honor and instead they forced the fire department to pay more to get the service that was requireded
If our usege goes beyond our agreed upon service level agreement on a regular basis then the ISP is supposed to tell us we have to step up to another plan.....at the end of a 12 month cycle
the all the time unlimited plans that Verizon mentioned are for larger Fire Department that need unlimted all the time. Lower tier plans for smaller fire departments still have the public emergency use terms that give us unthrottled unlimited data during an emergency
or work with the FTC to change or clarify the meaning of "unlimited data" and force all the carriers to call it something else.
This. Unlimited* and similar statements to the effect of 'no limitations' shouldn't be allowed terminology, if there actually are limitations. Sure they don't want to advertise all the edge cases that are limited, especially when those edge cases are out of their control. However, something completely under their control (arbitrary data caps) shouldn't be an edge case they're allowed to gloss over with a disclaimer.
*Actually Limited
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
If tomorrow, every American became a rational actor with perfect information about the market, so many market segments would simultaneously implode that the whole economy would collapse.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Ars Technica covered this some time back. Rival ISPs get their wires cut. ISPs have no-compete agreements with each other wherever possible and make it very expensive to compete in other circumstances. ISPs have gone bankrupt repairing mysteriously destroyed infrastructure in Comcast and Verizon territory.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Verizon introduced caps for the firefighters at the same time as they stopped network neutrality. That is the basis for the lawsuit demanding the reintroduction of net neutrality.
They may not be related in fact, but Verizon linked them in law.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)