Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during Calif. wildfire
Holy fuck boys, they’ve done it! We’ve got the first victim of a post-Net Neutrality nation. They’re finally throttling data. Thanks, Ajit Pai!
“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.”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 throttling recently affected “OES 5262,” a fire department
vehicle that is “deployed to large incidents as a command and control
resource” and is used to “track, organize, and prioritize routing of
resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are
most needed,” Bowden wrote.“OES 5262 also coordinates all local government resources deployed to the Mendocino Complex Fire,” an ongoing wildfire that is the largest in California’s history, Bowden wrote.
The vehicle has a device that uses a Verizon SIM card for Internet access.
“In the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, County
Fire discovered the data connection for OES 5262 was being throttled by
Verizon, and data rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the
previous speeds,” Bowden wrote. “These reduced speeds severely
interfered with the OES 5262’s ability to function effectively. My
Information Technology staff communicated directly with Verizon via
email about the throttling, requesting it be immediately lifted for
public safety purposes.”Verizon did not immediately restore full speeds to the device, however.
“Verizon representatives confirmed the throttling, but rather than
restoring us to an essential data transfer speed, they indicated that
County Fire would have to switch to a new data plan at more than twice
the cost, and they would only remove throttling after we contacted the
Department that handles billing and switched to the new data plan,”
Bowden wrote.______
This is gonna fall under public safety and create quite a ruckus
This has nothing to do with net(not) neutrality in the slightest.
What are you talking about??? Even if wireless was exempted from the original net neutrality law, doesn’t mean it has nothing to do with it. Net Neutrality was always about throttling data and prioritizing the traffic on networks.
Did you ever use a phone or the Internet before 2015?
Did you ever use the internet back in the 90s, when all we had was dial-up?
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