Stephen Silver
A net neutrality complaint claims the Santa Clara County Fire Department had its data throttled by Verizon as it acted to put out California's raging Mendocino wildfire, an action the company later said was a mistake.
Despite paying for unlimited data, the Santa Clara County Fire Department's data was throttled by Verizon Wireless, even as the department fought the Mendocino Complex fire earlier this month.
According to Ars Technica, the department has alleged the throttling as part of a multistate lawsuit seeking to block the FCC's reversal of net neutrality rules.
"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."
It goes on to allege that the department needed to pay more to Verizon in order to stop the throttling, even as it fought the fires. A similar situation had taken place during the fighting of two previous fires last year.
Verizon admitted, in a statement, to Ars, that it mishandled the situation.
"In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us," Verizon said. "This was a customer support mistake. We are reviewing the situation and will fix any issues going forward Like all customers, fire departments choose service plans that are best for them. This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost."
The throttling incident all happened following the official end of net neutrality in June.
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36 Comments
Not related to net neutrality whatever the submitted brief. Customer service contracts have limits and consequences for exceeding those limits extending way before and beyond net neutrality.
“Verizon also noted that the fire department purchased a data service plan that is slowed down after a data usage threshold is reached.”
Verizon's customer support credibility: Zero.
This has nothing to do with net neutrality, but the inappropriate phone contract County Fire chose with Verizon. Verizon, as you would expect, handled this badly, becuase it is Verizon. But really, wtf was Santa Clara doing buying a contract for emergency services that included throttling after a certain bandwidth was used?
So to cover up its mistake, County Fire has sent out the distraction squirrel of net neutrality. The political operatives in charge must think the average Californian is an idiot.
Yes, County Fire beancounters took out an inappropriate phone contract for a fire service.
Edit; I say this as natural disaster reponse is my job: it is shockingly poor risk management to rely on the phone company changing settings for data access in the middle of a crisis. Too much could go wrong at many steps in the process. It is something that should never be a consideration, because the likelihood of a glitch happening somewhere along the decision/action chain is too high for the potential consequences. If it is claimed money is the issue, let the head honchos do without corporate lunches at the monthly meetings.
blaming Verizon for a stuff up is like asking why a dog sniffs another dog’s backside. Trying to launch the net neutrality distraction squirrel is contemptible. Bottom line the fire department failed in its risk assessment process.