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Texas Lawmaker Wants To Ban Mobile Throttling In Disaster Areas (arstechnica.com)
Bobby Guerra, a Democratic member of the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives, filed a bill last week that would prohibit wireless carriers from throttling mobile internet service in disaster areas. "A mobile Internet service provider may not impair or degrade lawful mobile Internet service access in an area subject to a declared state of disaster," the bill says. If passed, it would take effect on September 1, 2019. Ars Technica reports: The bill, reported by NPR affiliate KUT, appears to be a response to Verizon's throttling of an "unlimited" data plan used by Santa Clara County firefighters during a wildfire response in California last year. But Guerra's bill would prohibit throttling in disaster areas of any customer, not just public safety officials. Wireless carriers often sell plans with a set amount of high-speed data and then throttle speeds after a customer has passed the high-speed data limit. Even with so-called "unlimited" plans, carriers reserve the right to throttle speeds once customers use a certain amount of data each month.
Despite the Verizon/Santa Clara incident, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has taken no action to prevent further incidents of throttling during emergencies. Pai's repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules allows throttling as long as the carrier discloses it, and the commission is trying to prevent states from imposing their own net neutrality rules.
Despite the Verizon/Santa Clara incident, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has taken no action to prevent further incidents of throttling during emergencies. Pai's repeal of Obama-era net neutrality rules allows throttling as long as the carrier discloses it, and the commission is trying to prevent states from imposing their own net neutrality rules.
Good idea. Then all the yahoos live-streaming the disaster can flood the towers with nonsense traffic.
Maybe have government plans that get priority over the general public?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Everyone will use tons of data even though half the towers are offline due to the hurricane (or whatever) and public safety officials will be limited by network congestion.
Better suggestion: leave the network management to the guys who know how to do it.
I would tend to support prohibitions on throttling for any emergency service and recovery personnel but it seems counterproductive to prevent throttling of typical consumers. During an emergency is exactly the best time to triage and prioritize some communications over others. Given that networks, wireless ones in particular, have limited total capacity I would not want to see emergency service and recovery service traffic taking a backseat to someone in the area watching YouTube videos. It seems emergencies are exactly the sort of thing QoS is designed for! It just needs to be applied properly giving the bandwidth resources to the people who will help the most other people.
The technical reality is during a disaster you want the DSCP markings to be honored (exact opposite of neutrality). E911 gets highest priority non control plane markings.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Or you could pass a law that requires first responders to pay attention to the plans they purchase in the first place and select the appropriate one.
Cellular networks could not even handle the traffic when Osama Bin Laden was supposedly killed. It was impossible to send a text or make a call. How about backtracking to the consistent failure of their outsourced pajeets and other corner cutting measures rather than blame a throttle boogeyman?
I'm all for net neutrality in the general case, but during an emergency we have the unfortunate mix of likely having higher demand and lower supply for traffic. Throttling nonessential traffic seems commonsense so essential traffic will make it through. The alternative might be an effective telco blackout during emergencies.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
THe poor fools who need help can get through
Disaster areas don't need high-speed data, they don't need unlimited data, they need everyone else to get off the information highway so relief and rescue crews can do their job. Texting and even twitter uses far less bandwidth than a couple of local yokels murmuring comforting words to each other. Disaster areas are the only place where consumer data needs to be de-prioritized.
A disaster should not be an opportunity for customers to use more data: That would be encouraging bad behaviour.
It couldn't have been the agency being cheap asses and assuming that they could get free data when they wanted it. Oh, and that's exactly one incident. This socialist power grab, by the way, would make the situation worse, but go ahead and feel smug about stealing from people because progressive.
I think law makers need to sit down with telcoms and the two need to work out why and when throttling is appropriate.
Especially in an emergency situation when EVERYONE is trying to use it, greedily, and without throttling, you just end in a situation where no one can use it at all.
So basically, understanding why throttling is taking place, before you start making laws about something you potentially have no f'ing clue about.
What an African-level pile of shit you guys have.. congrats!
The lack of consumer protections BIGLY encourage me to invest in America, fo sho!!
You should move there, youre perfect for it!
also forbid traffic congestion
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Never judge a socialist by the result, only by the goodness of their moral signaling or intention!!!!11
Here's the facts: We want emergency services to be able to communicate during an emergency, without restrictions. We want emergency service to pay just like everyone else. We don't want massive infrastructure that the end user pays for, and that is useless 99.9% of the time, except in emergencies.
So what telcos should do: Offer a plan exclusively to emergency services with the following rules: 1. They pay for their data and call allowance just like everyone else. 2. When they exceed their data allowance, for example due to an emergency, the bill for that is sorted out later, but they are NEVER capped and NEVER throttled and NEVER blocked. Also, they should get priority of networks are congested due to high traffic.
Of course that doesn't give a firefighter the right to watch videos all the time with a 500MB plan. They will not be capped, or slowed down, or blocked, but they will pay the bill.
Good,
Now, what else is buried in the bill that they are not disclosing to us all?
Um. HOld on. No. How about public service employees that need to rely on public telecommunications networks in safety of life situations, buy a fucking upgraded Safety Of Life Guaranteed data plan? And then, maybe the company will provide that unthrottled service as they race to risk their life to save people from burning up in flames. Like, if they choose to offer it. Which means either profitable for them to, or bad for profits if they don't. We'll see how much fuss you make about it on social media before deciding the latter.
More big goverment bull shit from the liberal left who want nothing more than 100% socialism to destroy country. We all in Texas STRONGLY voted to STOP this kind of big government libtard fatcat corrupt union globalist influence in the nation. And just like how net nutrality is a terrible idea past its time so is this. All regulation of amazing telecommunications industry always to result in bigger bills, higher taxes and more liberal agenda shoved down everyones throats. It will be good to see this effort defeated because Texans are real hard working americans like us and strongly behind republican freedom instead of democrat slavery.
Government services shouldn't be adding extra load to commercial networks during major catastrophes. Someone tell the government to stop being cheap. For everyone else - I can understand some situations in an emergency where internet services might be required but for the most part the average citizen should be focused on evacuating safely. Don't check Waze for updates - read road signs and listen to emergency services' directions. You should not be relying on commercial services during emergencies as a general rule...
The networks simply can't handle what this idiot is proposing. Oversubscription has been a thing since deregulation. You can't guarantee access to a finite resource where there is demand in excess of the supply. You must reduce demand or increase supply. You can't eat your cake and have it, too.
The ups: great when you got service.
The downs; if the cell towers didn't blow down from the storm or simply got wiped off the map. Several key towers were toppled or ruined by Harvey when it hit, pretty much killing all service in the Rockport/Fulton/Holiday Beach area for at least 2 full months after. There was only one tower that stayed in service and it was way down the road from town by Aransas Pass. The poor thing was so inundated with traffic, that data was a slow dog, and more than a few calls were dropping like flies.
But AT&T was sporting in removing the caps and giving us grace periods on billing. Dunno about Sprint or Verizon tho...
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Won't somebody please think of the First Responders ?!?!
-Helen Lovejoy
So bandwidth can magically be created out of nothing. Because legislation!
A gig in every pot!