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Verizon throttled fire department’s “unlimited” data during wildfire

567 points by jamroom 8y ago

hexsprite 8y ago
I mean, I get that this looks bad. But they were using a lot of data and they had to switch from a $39 plan to a $99 one. That's still not a lot of money for such a service.
- tw04 8y ago
  Not even remotely accurate. First off, they used 25GB of data - that's not what any rational person would consider "a lot" for an emergency service fighting a wildfire. It's not even "a lot" in the generic sense in 2018 in any country that isn't the US or Cuba. Second, the new plan is $99 for the first 20GB, and $8/GB thereafter. In other words, just to get back to baseline they would be at $139 which they blew through in a day or two. So you're talking several thousand dollars vs. $39 for a resource that costs Verizon nearly nothing to provide during an emergency such as this.
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    Seriously. Verizon could have gotten some positive PR too.
  - whatpad 8y ago
    It is not Verizon's problem if the government signed up for the wrong sized plan. It is not Verizon's problem if the government did not shop around for the best deal. It is Verizon's problem if the case can be made that $8/GB is gouging. However $10/GB is a very common price among contractless carriers such as Tracfone and Google, so $8/GBis certainly in the ballpark. Does not offering a bulk discount equate to gouging? IDK.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Verizon was likely mot meeting the terms of their contract under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA), they likely statement messaged these government customers back in 2016 saying "we're changing the terms" without renegotiating the contract as they were supposed to. This $37.99 unlimited plan is offered by both AT&T and Verizon under the WSCA contract, only Verizon chooses to throttle this plan...
  - whatpad 8y ago
    Does the fact that the government seems to have done nearly no due diligence regarding capacity planning play a factor in your criticism of Verizon? They relied on one emergency device with one communication link and thought $39/mo was sufficient apparently. That's silly and incompetent for any IT professional.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      It was $37.99 a month, and its the standard unlimited data device plan under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA). Up until recently, it was truly unlimited, but Verizon has decided to start throttling it without renegotiating their multi-state contract.
    - andymal 8y ago
      The article makes it seem like Verizon told them it would not be throttled. "We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan"
  - Domenic_S 8y ago
    they used 25GB of data - that's not what any rational person would consider "a lot" for an emergency service fighting a wildfire. This isn't self-evident. How much data is appropriate for an emergency service fighting a wildfire? What in the world are they doing with all that data?
    - jimktrains2 8y ago
      > How much data is appropriate for an emergency service fighting a wildfire? As much as they need?
    - pixl97 8y ago
      Have you even been in a modern fire fighting communications station? By your statement, I'll take that as a no.
      - Domenic_S 8y ago
        You're right, I haven't! I imagine a lot of people haven't. I didn't say the statement was wrong, just not self-evident.
wmf 8y ago
County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission-critical service So I guess they want to use net neutrality to force cellular carriers to offer enterprise-grade service at consumer prices. That's what everyone wants, of course, but it's rare to see someone actually say it.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Safety-of-life applications are not appropriate areas for throttling. That should have been in the state's contract with Verizon from day one, but it probably wasn't seen as necessary before the recent FCC ruling. Interesting moderation in this thread, concurrent with the sudden appearance of what looks like a brigade of counterfactual Verizon defenders. Hopefully the HN staff is keeping an eye on the IP logs.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    If you need an SLA, you pay $$$ for service with an SLA. This is basic IT competency.
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      It seems to me like the government could put Verizon on the "unlimited" wildfire protection plan. Which is to say that their office buildings with human employees in them get protected along with their regular taxes, but each backhaul fiber that doesn't get cut through while creating firebreaks, and each mobile comms tower that doesn't get all of its antennas burnt off, costs them extra. Or they can have unlimited capital assets deployed in the field protected, but after the first few million dollars worth are saved, the fire response gets throttled back so that the firefighters move more slowly than the fire. The kicker is that Verizon would just smile and put a "California wildfire protection fee cost recovery" line item on everybody's bill. Ernestine is the worst. Verizon won't play nice with anyone until Ma Bell gets broken up yet again.
kauffj 8y ago
This is outrageous, but it's outrageous because it is legal to describe something as unlimited that is in fact no such thing. The reasonable thing here would be to simply require companies to be honest and state the actual bandwidth they provide. This issue seems orthogonal to net neutrality; the real problem is in allowing companies to mislead.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kodablah 8y ago
  > The reasonable thing here would be to simply require companies to be honest and state the actual bandwidth they provide. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Verizon wants this too. Or maybe not, I don't know the landscape. But I don't expect them to altruistically abide by more reasonable definitions of these terms while their competitors don't (unless being honest is part of their selling point).
- briandear 8y ago
  Is the data capped? When they exceed their data cap, does the service shut off?
  - pixl97 8y ago
    If you went to an unlimited buffet and found out that you could only get one 'full' plate, then every other plate could only have one small piece of food and only once every hour, you'd be yelling about false advertising. If we want truth in advertising, then the banners would say "Unlimited 200Kbps Internet, capable of 25GB of 4G burst speed" Which is much different than "Unlimited 4G Internet", then a bunch of small text about the limits.
  - gnulinux 8y ago
    Yes, the service is "reliable fast internet". If I buy "Unlimited LTE 4G Internet" it's not ok to serve unreliable, slow internet after a "limit".
- 8y ago
qiqing 8y ago
It sounds like a good time for the fire department to switch to Project Fi. Would be good publicity for Project Fi if that happens. They're upfront about exactly what you're buying. No illusions.
- _august 8y ago
  At $10 a gig, I don't see how that would be any better.
  - Proziam 8y ago
    It caps at 6 gigs. The highest bill you can get is around 90 USD all in. Once it caps, it still works just fine. I'd know, I have Fi and have run over the cap many times during travel periods.
    - _august 8y ago
      https://fi.google.com/about/plan/ https://fi.google.com/about/plan/ Looks like it's 6 gigs for $80 total, then up to 15 gigs unlimited at fast speeds after that, then unlimited at 256kbps after that. Similiar definition of "Unlimited" as Verizon, but they are more upfront about it. However the Fire department was using 25+ gigs, they would run into the same capping issues.
- mark212 8y ago
  Many public safety agencies go with Verizon because they’re the only carrier that has service out in the middle of nowhere. These fires aren’t in San Jose, they’re all over the state. California fire pulls from local agencies when the wildfires get massive and rely on exactly these kinds of mobile command trucks to coordinate the efforts. Project Fi is a joke when it comes to coverage. I truly don’t see why Verizon didn’t just waive the caps for this one SIM card. Ridiculous and it’s a huge PR shitstorm for them. (Not that I’m crying, they suck.)
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Verizon also owns the lower-frequency bands that are better able to penetrate buildings.
RIMR 8y ago
>Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services Interfering with emergency services is a felony. Whoever signed off on throttling them after learning that doing so would inhibit crisis-response ought to be arrested.
- whatpad 8y ago
  Armchair grandstanding. If an EMT asks a bystander for help and he refuses, he did not commit a crime.
  - wtallis 8y ago
    The situation with Verizon is more like a case of an EMT asking a bystander to get out of the way, which the bystander absolutely has an obligation to comply with. But it's complicated by the fact that Verizon isn't just a bystander but a company that had an existing contract with the fire department, and had previously been informed that their throttling was causing problems.
  - walshemj 8y ago
    Telecoms is CNI its entirely different
  - FireBeyond 8y ago
    No, but if I as an EMT or paramedic, ask you to get out of my way, and you refuse, you absolutely are committing a crime.
- thsowers 8y ago
  > Whoever signed off on throttling them This was likely the work of an automated system following a set of pre-programmed business logic. However, one would think that this could easily be undone with human intervention and a click of a button
modells 8y ago
If corporations are willing to suicide the planet and potentially billions of lives for dirty energy, why would a telco not sabotage health and safety services if it made them more money?
kodablah 8y ago
> While fire department personnel thought they were already paying for "truly" unlimited data, Verizon said they weren't. Despite the overarching issues here, what culpability is there when these public safety services who build reliance on these private companies don't do due diligence on what they use? We can all pull on heartstrings, say this customer is special after the fact, bemoan that both Verizon and the fire department have red tape making it a slower-than-necessary process, etc. As a customer, I empathize with the fire department because it isn't always clear to us what unlimited is. But in this environment, while Verizon has fault here as does the general system, these public services need to do a bit more to ensure they are getting what they expect. Net neutrality isn't going to fix the "unlimited" wording issues or throttling as much as we'd like it to. That needs fixing sure, but in the meantime these public services need to get together and share info/plans/etc. To the bigger problem...well, that's a different deal and not specific to this anecdote.
- rbritton 8y ago
  This category of issue is surfacing more and more in marketing of a variety of products and services. Advertisers are using terms that traditionally meant one thing and then redefining them via fine print legalese. Further, they're also advertising one price with an actual total significantly higher (e.g., hotels charging a "resort fee" on top of the regular room rate).
- Johnny555 8y ago
  Rather than complain that customers don't read the fine print, how about removing throttling from the fine print and have companies advertise what they are selling? If they are selling an "unlimited" plan, then it should be unlimited (i.e. without throttling of any kind) If they are selling a "20GB then throttled to 128kbs speeds" plan, then call it a "20GB plus" plan so everyone knows what they are buying.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > Rather than complain that customers don't read the fine print, how about removing throttling from the fine print and have companies advertise what they are selling? That's the larger problem I alluded to. My point was about these important public services not doing some of the diligence many of us can. It's not about fine print or not, clearly what Verizon does is wrong, I'm just saying that these places need to put in a bit more research. I think everyone here agrees that these companies shouldn't mislead, so just repeating that seems like obvious and meaningless discussion. I put "despite the overarching issues", "we can all [...] bemoan that [...] Verizon [...] have red tape", "I empathize", "fix the [...] wording as we'd like it to", "that needs fixing", "in the meantime", and "bigger problem [...] that's a different deal" all because it's clear what the larger problem is. My point is nuanced about public services and due diligence in these current annoying times, but clearly my attempts to avoid the obvious point didn't work.
driverdan 8y ago
Wouldn't net neutrality preclude them from receiving special treatment? If there's an exception for emergency services it's not neutrality.
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  I don't think so, as demonstrated by the fact that end users can pay different monthly fees for different speeds. Net neutrality focuses not on end-user access, but on content providers, and ensuring that all of them are treated equally.
- rickycook 8y ago
  well, 911 receives special treatment but is regulated under the same rules as the NN services afaik?
parliament32 8y ago
I think the biggest issue that's being brought to light here is how "unlimited" plans are pretty much never "unlimited". Despite the fine print, how is this not false advertising? Can I name a product anything I want and bury whatever conditions in the fine print?
- Zarath 8y ago
  It is false advertising, simple as that. Nobody is going to do anything about it though, because our politicians are bought. Best thing you can do is boycott and hope they will change.
super_trooper 8y ago
Well, sure. It's not like a human is on the other end checking the final "ok" before throttling somebody's data speed because they have exceeded some threshold.
appleflaxen 8y ago
internet needs to be made into a public utility.
flashgordon 8y ago
This has gotta be the last straw right towards classiying ISPs as utilities? Or is there a lobby for this too?
hedora 8y ago
The fact that they started throttling at all during an emergency is criminal. Charges would be filed if this had been any other type of service (mechanics raising rates, gas price gouging, landlines refusing service without additional payment, an intentional 911 outage, etc, etc). Either we need more regulation, or the county should withdraw Verizon’s right of way. There needs to be severe recourse when public utilities engage in hostage taking.
jacob019 8y ago
I disdain Pajit's FCC, but I fail to see what this incident has to do with net neutrality.
- hedora 8y ago
  The article points out that as a (probably intentional, I think) side effect of the network neutrality appeal, it is no longer possible for the fire department to file a complaint about this with the FCC
drawkbox 8y ago
Look at the bright side, at least Verizon doesn't run the water utility. The water companies weren't throttling down water asking for price gouging. ISPs like Verizon just run the network utility, that only the ISPs don't think is a utility. The reason ISPs fought so hard to end net neutrality, remove privacy protections and remove them from FCC oversight was to remove ISPs and the network utility from Title II / common carrier protections which make them a utility. ISPs know they are a utility but only want the benefits [1] not the service and legal requirements of being a privileged utility and local monopoly. > Broadband providers have spent years lobbying against utility-style regulations that protect consumers from high prices and bad service. > But now, broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water and sewer networks. In the providers' view, the essential nature of broadband doesn't require more regulation to protect consumers. Instead, they argue that broadband's utility-like status is reason for the government to give ISPs more money. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-utilities-but-only-to-get-more-money-from-the-government/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-...
- kalleboo 8y ago
  Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless you're coke/nestle I guess)
  - drawkbox 8y ago
    > Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless you're coke/nestle I guess) True, it is a physical resource as well but they aren't throttling water and they meter it, so if you use less you don't have to pay for that unused water, but if you use more or an almost unlimited need, you pay for that usage. ISPs get data overage charges after data caps but I don't get money back when I don't use up all my plan. ISPs have ISP-friendly metering now with data caps and throttling, I pay if I go over but I don't get money back if I use less. Or they offer unlimited plans that are throttled earlier than people want to oversell their capacity. Water isn't throttled and limited if you are paying but it isn't truly unlimited, neither is bandwidth/capacity, but bandwidth/capacity is more unlimited than water is as expansion is easier. All cable ISPs have to do is take more of the line dedicated to TV channels and use them for data and expand capacity, but they are choosing to nickel and dime and keep capacity low to keep data caps, throttling, overselling capacity, tax dollars and invest as little as possible in those areas rather than offer innovative jumps in bandwidth required for progress.
DINKDINK 8y ago
I wonder if this article is being pushed by FirstNet[1] to sow public ire at Verizon. [1] https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att-surveillance/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att-surveillanc...
tjohns 8y ago
Verizon's billing practices aside, I'm surprised they're not using FirstNet (firstnet.gov / firstnet.com), since I thought the whole point of that project is to create a cellular network specifically for emergency services. It also looks like FirstNet has a slightly more generous data overage policy for their "unlimited" plan: > "Unlimited Plan may not exceed 22GB a month for three consecutive months; AT&T reserves the right to require Customer to move to a FirstNet Mobile—Pooled Plan if usage exceeds this limitation." Does anybody know how widely FirstNet has actually been adopted?
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  FirstNet's spectrum has yet to be deployed significantly, and in that part of California AT&T lags for coverage. Band 14 (the spectrum FirstNet uses) devices are few and far between, let alone a cellular data gateway that supports that band. It took years for band 12 to be available on cellular data gateways, I think band 71 will likely make an appearance before band 14 gets hardware support.
logfromblammo 8y ago
My biggest question is why fire departments are using consumer-level services over commercial-licensed radio bands when they could be using SDRs with the spectrum specifically allocated for land mobile communications for public safety and emergency services in the 1m to 10m VHF band?
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  Well, it's complicated. The short answer is, "because nobody's come up with a better solution yet." Off the top of my head: In big incidents, there's a ton of radio traffic flying around at different frequencies. You have to make sure they don't interfere. Cellular handles this pretty well out-of-the-box. There are myriad electronics and devices in use, including wireless printers and laptops, so whatever you come up with has to play nice with wifi and also offer a wifi<->your_thing bridge. Again, cellular hotspots do this out of the box. Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count. It needs to be maintainable by a large number of people. If there are just three people in the whole state who know how to troubleshoot and fix your system, it's no good. It can't be stupidly, ridiculously expensive. It has to work in all kinds of terrain. IC can't just squirt signals through hills. Somebody could probably invent a solution that does all those things. But they haven't yet.
  - leni536 8y ago
    > Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count. Is there a reason that map tiles have to be accessed real time over the Internet and can't be update for eg. daily and kept on a local hard drive? Is it too large? For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in.
    - thaumaturgy 8y ago
      Mostly technical effort. I'm not sure what fire/OES uses for GIS. The system we use does have a locally-hosted option, but that requires someone knowing how to update it and what to do if the server stops behaving. > For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in. Not really. Mutual aid happens often enough that that's not really a bet you want to make. Especially in the case of CalOES resources, which are sent from disaster to disaster all over the state.
toss1 8y ago
Cut through all the fine legal crap arguments here. 1) Verizon and their ilk are happy to blatantly misrepresent their offerings (and no, fine print footnotes/end notes don't count). 2) Verizon and their ilk, far from being decent corporate citizens and coming to the aid of firefighters, DO NOT CARE care if their misrepresentation gets people killed, as long as they can extract their maximum toll. The business model is not to provide better service in a competitive environment, it is to capture the regulatory agencies so that they can extract the maximum rents, regardless of consequences.
nickodell 8y ago
>Verizon's throttling was described in fire department emails beginning June 29 of this year, just weeks after the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules took effect. Does throttling in this manner violate network neutrality rules? The 25GB/mo cap is enforced in a way that is neutral to applications or users.
- oarsinsync 8y ago
  If they provide services that do not count against the 25GB/mo cap (e.g. Verizon's own video streaming service) while other competing services (e.g. Netflix) do, then probably, yes. If not, then probably not, no.
jrockway 8y ago
This seems like the classic case of people relying on intuition instead of the documented SLA. Verizon's plan should be assumed to be a 200Kbps plan that can occasionally burst to 50Mbps. But someone tried it out, and mentally built the model that it was an always-50Mbps plan. Then they were proven wrong during a crisis. I very much agree with other posters that "unlimited" is a very misleading term. If the service runs at 200Kbps, then that's something like 65GB/month, which is not an infinite amount of data. If Verizon sold two "unlimited" plans, one that could be throttled and one that couldn't be, it would be very clear to the customer why the 16TB/month (50Mbps * 1 month) plan was a lot more expensive than the 65GB/month (200Kbps * 1 month) plan. But they hide it all in the fine print, so anyone that doesn't carefully read the fine print and extensively test the service doesn't actually know what they're getting. This is unfortunate. I don't think it's a net neutrality issue (it's not like they were throttled because the traffic was going to Amazon instead of Google), but rather a truth-in-advertising issue.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  Plans should specifically guarantee an average speed and the maximum amount of data usage available. The term unlimited is blatant false advertising.
- briandear 8y ago
  The fine print isn’t that fine. It’s pretty clear what you are getting: https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited/
  - modeless 8y ago
    No amount of print, fine or otherwise, can justify usage-based throttling on a plan advertised as unlimited. It's false advertising, plain and simple. Verizon has even been punished for false "unlimited" advertising in the past, but they clearly didn't learn their lesson. https://consumerist.com/2007/10/23/verizon-to-pay-1-million-to-customers-after-falsely-advertising-data-plans-as-unlimited/index.html https://consumerist.com/2007/10/23/verizon-to-pay-1-million-...
mirimir 8y ago
Maybe fire departments should throttle responses to fires at Verizon facilities ;)
walshemj 8y ago
And why are there not telecoms contingency plans for natural disasters? where civilian subs would get put to the back of the line or turned off entirely I know some one who did that for BT planning for various civil disasters nuclear melt downs etc - went on some interesting courses apparently.
_bxg1 8y ago
Wait, so what you're telling me is, in the absence of accountability, telecom corporations won't just act in good faith?
DoctorOetker 8y ago
When a Verizon facility catches fire, may the water facility throttle the water supply, demanding upgrades? Can the fire department throttle attention for Verizon's troubles during such a fire?
williesleg 8y ago
I'm pretty sure they should have been fighting fires instead of surfing. What did firemen do 20 years age without iPhones?
johngalt 8y ago
"Critical emergency services fix now! Huge problem! wait what? It costs $60? Well.... Let me see..." It never ceases to amaze me how worked up people can get over an outage, yet still balk at tiny costs. This puts me in the unenviable position of defending Verizon here. People are painting this as Verizon being usurious, and not as a lack of proper capacity planning on the fire departments part. What is the actual problem here? - Verizon wasn't price gouging or changing the terms during a time of emergency. - The emergency services certainly are important, which is precisely why they should be buying the appropriate services for their needs. Rather than blaming Verizon for not giving them a free ride. Verizon has stated terms on their service levels, and what can be expected. They offered to change the service level instantly for the published price. No penalties or special fees etc... While their "Unlimited" verbiage may be misleading to the uninformed, any professional ops person would understand and expect this. Consumer level services built on light usage are a constant thorn in the side of operations people everywhere. It creates extremely flawed expectations on the business side for what reliable/high usage systems cost. I guarantee there was someone in the chain who wanted proper planning on this wireless data service, and was shut down with "whatever, I don't care about all your tech babble just get the $40 plan it works fine for [other use case]." Now rather than take responsibility for the operational failure, the organization blames a vendor for not providing free additional services.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  "Unlimited" is not just misleading. It is an outright lie. It is completely false and Verizon knows it is false but continues to call it that because they know it will fool some of their customers.
- scrumption 8y ago
  Won't someone please think of Verizon's margins?!
- onion2k 8y ago
  Now rather than take responsibility for the operational failure, the organization blames a vendor for not providing free additional services. Maybe Verizon's salesperson told them it'd only be throttled in non-emergency situations and Verizon would remove the limit in the case of an actual emergency so the cheaper package would be fine as Verizon say themselves in the article.
orf 8y ago
The oes 5262 if anyone is interested: http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20and%20EMS/oes%205262?sort=3&page=1 http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20a...
thaumaturgy 8y ago
I wonder how many people read the article to the end, let alone the addendum filed by SCCFD [1]. This has nothing to do with the definition of "unlimited" or the fine print for it. OES 5262 (that's a CalOES resource) had sufficient bandwidth for fire response needs up until the Mendocino Complex incident, when their connection was strangled so badly that it wasn't just slow, it was unusable, during a major state disaster. This put a lot of lives directly at risk. Their brief is arguing in support of the lawsuit against the FCC that's attempting to overturn the repeal of net neutrality. They argue that in a deregulated environment, providers like Verizon can and will use disasters to strong-arm responding agencies -- state and local governments -- into paying higher fees. This is well supported by Verizon's emails, which flatly refused to assist SCCFD until they ponied up the extra money for a plan upgrade that they didn't need until the Mendocino fire. The article also adds that the FCC's removal of net neutrality removed the ability for SCCFD to complain to the FCC about this behavior. A few people are saying that maybe the fire department should have more carefully reviewed their plan information, or they should have had more qualified people in IT. Well, maybe. I looked up Eric Prosser's LinkedIn profile, and he's spent his whole career in management. Maybe there was a technical issue, or maybe it was just an oversight. But ultimately it's hard for agencies to attract strong technical talent, especially in Silicon Valley, where so much of that talent is working on the much more interesting problems of squeezing more money out of advertising or debt collections. If you want your first responder agencies to have working technology, get involved. Somewhere in each of those agencies is a human being who may not think about things like bandwidth throttling as carefully as HN's nerds. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire-department-net-neutrality.pdf https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire-depa...
tomohawk 8y ago
This is actually an argument against net neutrality. If critical services are to use the internet for comms, then shouldn't these services get higher quality of service? And shouldn't this higher quality cost more?
scarface74 8y ago
Nothing I’m about to write is meant to excuse Verizon. There are two types of “unlimited” when it comes to cell phone plans in the US. - After you go over a certain limit, your data speeds are immediately throttled down to a lower, usually unusable rate. - after you go over a certain limit, your data is “deprioritized” to let less heavy users in the same area have full speed. In the 2nd case, you could go a whole month without being noticeable throttled if you aren’t in a congested area. Unlike wired internet, you can’t just “build more capacity” over the air. There is a theoretical limit on how much bandwidth you can have at a certain frequency range and some frequency ranges aren’t suitable for communications (I know I’m butchering the explanation). The second definition of “unlimited” is defensible because of the reality of delivering data over the air. What Verizon calls “unlimited” is not.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  There is only one defensible definition of "unlimited" and that is: - Your data is given the same priority for the entire duration of the plan regardless of how much is used. Bandwidth may be decreased because of congestion, but no specific action will be taken to deprioritize it based on usage level. Wireless ISPs may not want to sell plans like that, but that doesn't mean you can redefine the word "unlimited" to mean something different from what it plainly means. If QOS measures are specifically targeted based on whether your usage has crossed a certain threshold, that is clearly a limit.
js2 8y ago
Why are wireless plans sold by data instead of by bandwidth, like wired plans? Don't sell me 20 GB/mo, rather sell me 1.5 Mbps min capacity with the ability to burst if the network isn't congested. It's the bandwidth which is the constrained resource. Obviously there might sometimes be physical factors that prevent even the minimum.
magoon 8y ago
The real problem with the “throttling” is that it slows it down to uselessness.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
a1exus 8y ago
"unlimited" _MUST_ be unlimited, not Verizon unlimited, or any other unlimited!
TechBrendan 8y ago
To me as i build cell phone towers for many carriars i will say this. If each carriar would understand or take in the matter of fact as what do they call unlimited i would like to figure that out. First off text and voice and calls are unlimited but data is never unlimited because there will always be a cap hello people and businesses out there. If we were all smart and we all went to court on this unlimited plan issue we would all be rich. If a plan cost $100 and its unlimted that means there should be no cap on data ussage any time you have an account. I will always also question a cell phone store about unlimited data because it is so totaly false really it is. People have to really look at how much data do we use each day while we have a cell phone. I laugh all sorry to say i know i am in the cell phone world my self i do shake my head alot and i will say this. When or in time will agencies figure this unlimited plans out the right way and not screw people or lower there speeds.
benlorenzetti 8y ago
I can't use every gear ratio on my 18-speed bike but I'm not upset by this relevation.

567 points by jamroom 8y ago

I mean, I get that this looks bad. But they were using a lot of data and they had to switch from a $39 plan to a $99 one. That's still not a lot of money for such a service.

tw04 8y ago
Not even remotely accurate. First off, they used 25GB of data - that's not what any rational person would consider "a lot" for an emergency service fighting a wildfire. It's not even "a lot" in the generic sense in 2018 in any country that isn't the US or Cuba. Second, the new plan is $99 for the first 20GB, and $8/GB thereafter. In other words, just to get back to baseline they would be at $139 which they blew through in a day or two. So you're talking several thousand dollars vs. $39 for a resource that costs Verizon nearly nothing to provide during an emergency such as this.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  Seriously. Verizon could have gotten some positive PR too.
- whatpad 8y ago
  It is not Verizon's problem if the government signed up for the wrong sized plan. It is not Verizon's problem if the government did not shop around for the best deal. It is Verizon's problem if the case can be made that $8/GB is gouging. However $10/GB is a very common price among contractless carriers such as Tracfone and Google, so $8/GBis certainly in the ballpark. Does not offering a bulk discount equate to gouging? IDK.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Verizon was likely mot meeting the terms of their contract under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA), they likely statement messaged these government customers back in 2016 saying "we're changing the terms" without renegotiating the contract as they were supposed to. This $37.99 unlimited plan is offered by both AT&T and Verizon under the WSCA contract, only Verizon chooses to throttle this plan...
- whatpad 8y ago
  Does the fact that the government seems to have done nearly no due diligence regarding capacity planning play a factor in your criticism of Verizon? They relied on one emergency device with one communication link and thought $39/mo was sufficient apparently. That's silly and incompetent for any IT professional.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    It was $37.99 a month, and its the standard unlimited data device plan under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA). Up until recently, it was truly unlimited, but Verizon has decided to start throttling it without renegotiating their multi-state contract.
  - andymal 8y ago
    The article makes it seem like Verizon told them it would not be throttled. "We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan"
- Domenic_S 8y ago
  they used 25GB of data - that's not what any rational person would consider "a lot" for an emergency service fighting a wildfire. This isn't self-evident. How much data is appropriate for an emergency service fighting a wildfire? What in the world are they doing with all that data?
  - jimktrains2 8y ago
    > How much data is appropriate for an emergency service fighting a wildfire? As much as they need?
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Have you even been in a modern fire fighting communications station? By your statement, I'll take that as a no.
    - Domenic_S 8y ago
      You're right, I haven't! I imagine a lot of people haven't. I didn't say the statement was wrong, just not self-evident.

wmf 8y ago

County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher-cost plans, ultimately paying significantly more for mission-critical service So I guess they want to use net neutrality to force cellular carriers to offer enterprise-grade service at consumer prices. That's what everyone wants, of course, but it's rare to see someone actually say it.

CamperBob2 8y ago
Safety-of-life applications are not appropriate areas for throttling. That should have been in the state's contract with Verizon from day one, but it probably wasn't seen as necessary before the recent FCC ruling. Interesting moderation in this thread, concurrent with the sudden appearance of what looks like a brigade of counterfactual Verizon defenders. Hopefully the HN staff is keeping an eye on the IP logs.
- rayiner 8y ago
  If you need an SLA, you pay $$$ for service with an SLA. This is basic IT competency.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    It seems to me like the government could put Verizon on the "unlimited" wildfire protection plan. Which is to say that their office buildings with human employees in them get protected along with their regular taxes, but each backhaul fiber that doesn't get cut through while creating firebreaks, and each mobile comms tower that doesn't get all of its antennas burnt off, costs them extra. Or they can have unlimited capital assets deployed in the field protected, but after the first few million dollars worth are saved, the fire response gets throttled back so that the firefighters move more slowly than the fire. The kicker is that Verizon would just smile and put a "California wildfire protection fee cost recovery" line item on everybody's bill. Ernestine is the worst. Verizon won't play nice with anyone until Ma Bell gets broken up yet again.

kauffj 8y ago

This is outrageous, but it's outrageous because it is legal to describe something as unlimited that is in fact no such thing. The reasonable thing here would be to simply require companies to be honest and state the actual bandwidth they provide. This issue seems orthogonal to net neutrality; the real problem is in allowing companies to mislead.

deleted 8y ago
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kodablah 8y ago
> The reasonable thing here would be to simply require companies to be honest and state the actual bandwidth they provide. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Verizon wants this too. Or maybe not, I don't know the landscape. But I don't expect them to altruistically abide by more reasonable definitions of these terms while their competitors don't (unless being honest is part of their selling point).
briandear 8y ago
Is the data capped? When they exceed their data cap, does the service shut off?
- pixl97 8y ago
  If you went to an unlimited buffet and found out that you could only get one 'full' plate, then every other plate could only have one small piece of food and only once every hour, you'd be yelling about false advertising. If we want truth in advertising, then the banners would say "Unlimited 200Kbps Internet, capable of 25GB of 4G burst speed" Which is much different than "Unlimited 4G Internet", then a bunch of small text about the limits.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Yes, the service is "reliable fast internet". If I buy "Unlimited LTE 4G Internet" it's not ok to serve unreliable, slow internet after a "limit".
8y ago

qiqing 8y ago

It sounds like a good time for the fire department to switch to Project Fi. Would be good publicity for Project Fi if that happens. They're upfront about exactly what you're buying. No illusions.

_august 8y ago
At $10 a gig, I don't see how that would be any better.
- Proziam 8y ago
  It caps at 6 gigs. The highest bill you can get is around 90 USD all in. Once it caps, it still works just fine. I'd know, I have Fi and have run over the cap many times during travel periods.
  - _august 8y ago
    https://fi.google.com/about/plan/ https://fi.google.com/about/plan/ Looks like it's 6 gigs for $80 total, then up to 15 gigs unlimited at fast speeds after that, then unlimited at 256kbps after that. Similiar definition of "Unlimited" as Verizon, but they are more upfront about it. However the Fire department was using 25+ gigs, they would run into the same capping issues.
mark212 8y ago
Many public safety agencies go with Verizon because they’re the only carrier that has service out in the middle of nowhere. These fires aren’t in San Jose, they’re all over the state. California fire pulls from local agencies when the wildfires get massive and rely on exactly these kinds of mobile command trucks to coordinate the efforts. Project Fi is a joke when it comes to coverage. I truly don’t see why Verizon didn’t just waive the caps for this one SIM card. Ridiculous and it’s a huge PR shitstorm for them. (Not that I’m crying, they suck.)
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Verizon also owns the lower-frequency bands that are better able to penetrate buildings.

RIMR 8y ago

>Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services Interfering with emergency services is a felony. Whoever signed off on throttling them after learning that doing so would inhibit crisis-response ought to be arrested.

whatpad 8y ago
Armchair grandstanding. If an EMT asks a bystander for help and he refuses, he did not commit a crime.
- wtallis 8y ago
  The situation with Verizon is more like a case of an EMT asking a bystander to get out of the way, which the bystander absolutely has an obligation to comply with. But it's complicated by the fact that Verizon isn't just a bystander but a company that had an existing contract with the fire department, and had previously been informed that their throttling was causing problems.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Telecoms is CNI its entirely different
- FireBeyond 8y ago
  No, but if I as an EMT or paramedic, ask you to get out of my way, and you refuse, you absolutely are committing a crime.
thsowers 8y ago
> Whoever signed off on throttling them This was likely the work of an automated system following a set of pre-programmed business logic. However, one would think that this could easily be undone with human intervention and a click of a button

modells 8y ago

If corporations are willing to suicide the planet and potentially billions of lives for dirty energy, why would a telco not sabotage health and safety services if it made them more money?

kodablah 8y ago

> While fire department personnel thought they were already paying for "truly" unlimited data, Verizon said they weren't. Despite the overarching issues here, what culpability is there when these public safety services who build reliance on these private companies don't do due diligence on what they use? We can all pull on heartstrings, say this customer is special after the fact, bemoan that both Verizon and the fire department have red tape making it a slower-than-necessary process, etc. As a customer, I empathize with the fire department because it isn't always clear to us what unlimited is. But in this environment, while Verizon has fault here as does the general system, these public services need to do a bit more to ensure they are getting what they expect. Net neutrality isn't going to fix the "unlimited" wording issues or throttling as much as we'd like it to. That needs fixing sure, but in the meantime these public services need to get together and share info/plans/etc. To the bigger problem...well, that's a different deal and not specific to this anecdote.

rbritton 8y ago
This category of issue is surfacing more and more in marketing of a variety of products and services. Advertisers are using terms that traditionally meant one thing and then redefining them via fine print legalese. Further, they're also advertising one price with an actual total significantly higher (e.g., hotels charging a "resort fee" on top of the regular room rate).
Johnny555 8y ago
Rather than complain that customers don't read the fine print, how about removing throttling from the fine print and have companies advertise what they are selling? If they are selling an "unlimited" plan, then it should be unlimited (i.e. without throttling of any kind) If they are selling a "20GB then throttled to 128kbs speeds" plan, then call it a "20GB plus" plan so everyone knows what they are buying.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > Rather than complain that customers don't read the fine print, how about removing throttling from the fine print and have companies advertise what they are selling? That's the larger problem I alluded to. My point was about these important public services not doing some of the diligence many of us can. It's not about fine print or not, clearly what Verizon does is wrong, I'm just saying that these places need to put in a bit more research. I think everyone here agrees that these companies shouldn't mislead, so just repeating that seems like obvious and meaningless discussion. I put "despite the overarching issues", "we can all [...] bemoan that [...] Verizon [...] have red tape", "I empathize", "fix the [...] wording as we'd like it to", "that needs fixing", "in the meantime", and "bigger problem [...] that's a different deal" all because it's clear what the larger problem is. My point is nuanced about public services and due diligence in these current annoying times, but clearly my attempts to avoid the obvious point didn't work.

driverdan 8y ago

Wouldn't net neutrality preclude them from receiving special treatment? If there's an exception for emergency services it's not neutrality.

oarsinsync 8y ago
I don't think so, as demonstrated by the fact that end users can pay different monthly fees for different speeds. Net neutrality focuses not on end-user access, but on content providers, and ensuring that all of them are treated equally.
rickycook 8y ago
well, 911 receives special treatment but is regulated under the same rules as the NN services afaik?

parliament32 8y ago

I think the biggest issue that's being brought to light here is how "unlimited" plans are pretty much never "unlimited". Despite the fine print, how is this not false advertising? Can I name a product anything I want and bury whatever conditions in the fine print?

Zarath 8y ago
It is false advertising, simple as that. Nobody is going to do anything about it though, because our politicians are bought. Best thing you can do is boycott and hope they will change.

super_trooper 8y ago

Well, sure. It's not like a human is on the other end checking the final "ok" before throttling somebody's data speed because they have exceeded some threshold.

appleflaxen 8y ago

internet needs to be made into a public utility.

flashgordon 8y ago

This has gotta be the last straw right towards classiying ISPs as utilities? Or is there a lobby for this too?

hedora 8y ago

The fact that they started throttling at all during an emergency is criminal. Charges would be filed if this had been any other type of service (mechanics raising rates, gas price gouging, landlines refusing service without additional payment, an intentional 911 outage, etc, etc). Either we need more regulation, or the county should withdraw Verizon’s right of way. There needs to be severe recourse when public utilities engage in hostage taking.

jacob019 8y ago

I disdain Pajit's FCC, but I fail to see what this incident has to do with net neutrality.

hedora 8y ago
The article points out that as a (probably intentional, I think) side effect of the network neutrality appeal, it is no longer possible for the fire department to file a complaint about this with the FCC

drawkbox 8y ago

Look at the bright side, at least Verizon doesn't run the water utility. The water companies weren't throttling down water asking for price gouging. ISPs like Verizon just run the network utility, that only the ISPs don't think is a utility. The reason ISPs fought so hard to end net neutrality, remove privacy protections and remove them from FCC oversight was to remove ISPs and the network utility from Title II / common carrier protections which make them a utility. ISPs know they are a utility but only want the benefits [1] not the service and legal requirements of being a privileged utility and local monopoly. > Broadband providers have spent years lobbying against utility-style regulations that protect consumers from high prices and bad service. > But now, broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water and sewer networks. In the providers' view, the essential nature of broadband doesn't require more regulation to protect consumers. Instead, they argue that broadband's utility-like status is reason for the government to give ISPs more money. [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-utilities-but-only-to-get-more-money-from-the-government/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/isps-want-to-be-...

kalleboo 8y ago
Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless you're coke/nestle I guess)
- drawkbox 8y ago
  > Water utilities also generally do not offer "unlimited water" plans (unless you're coke/nestle I guess) True, it is a physical resource as well but they aren't throttling water and they meter it, so if you use less you don't have to pay for that unused water, but if you use more or an almost unlimited need, you pay for that usage. ISPs get data overage charges after data caps but I don't get money back when I don't use up all my plan. ISPs have ISP-friendly metering now with data caps and throttling, I pay if I go over but I don't get money back if I use less. Or they offer unlimited plans that are throttled earlier than people want to oversell their capacity. Water isn't throttled and limited if you are paying but it isn't truly unlimited, neither is bandwidth/capacity, but bandwidth/capacity is more unlimited than water is as expansion is easier. All cable ISPs have to do is take more of the line dedicated to TV channels and use them for data and expand capacity, but they are choosing to nickel and dime and keep capacity low to keep data caps, throttling, overselling capacity, tax dollars and invest as little as possible in those areas rather than offer innovative jumps in bandwidth required for progress.

DINKDINK 8y ago

I wonder if this article is being pushed by FirstNet[1] to sow public ire at Verizon. [1] https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att-surveillance/ https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att-surveillanc...

tjohns 8y ago

Verizon's billing practices aside, I'm surprised they're not using FirstNet (firstnet.gov / firstnet.com), since I thought the whole point of that project is to create a cellular network specifically for emergency services. It also looks like FirstNet has a slightly more generous data overage policy for their "unlimited" plan: > "Unlimited Plan may not exceed 22GB a month for three consecutive months; AT&T reserves the right to require Customer to move to a FirstNet Mobile—Pooled Plan if usage exceeds this limitation." Does anybody know how widely FirstNet has actually been adopted?

StudentStuff 8y ago
FirstNet's spectrum has yet to be deployed significantly, and in that part of California AT&T lags for coverage. Band 14 (the spectrum FirstNet uses) devices are few and far between, let alone a cellular data gateway that supports that band. It took years for band 12 to be available on cellular data gateways, I think band 71 will likely make an appearance before band 14 gets hardware support.

logfromblammo 8y ago

My biggest question is why fire departments are using consumer-level services over commercial-licensed radio bands when they could be using SDRs with the spectrum specifically allocated for land mobile communications for public safety and emergency services in the 1m to 10m VHF band?

thaumaturgy 8y ago
Well, it's complicated. The short answer is, "because nobody's come up with a better solution yet." Off the top of my head: In big incidents, there's a ton of radio traffic flying around at different frequencies. You have to make sure they don't interfere. Cellular handles this pretty well out-of-the-box. There are myriad electronics and devices in use, including wireless printers and laptops, so whatever you come up with has to play nice with wifi and also offer a wifi<->your_thing bridge. Again, cellular hotspots do this out of the box. Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count. It needs to be maintainable by a large number of people. If there are just three people in the whole state who know how to troubleshoot and fix your system, it's no good. It can't be stupidly, ridiculously expensive. It has to work in all kinds of terrain. IC can't just squirt signals through hills. Somebody could probably invent a solution that does all those things. But they haven't yet.
- leni536 8y ago
  > Bandwidth is really important. GIS is a big part of operations, so that's a lot of high-resolution map tiles flying through the air, and when it takes time to load or print a map, it can really jam up operations. Seconds count. Is there a reason that map tiles have to be accessed real time over the Internet and can't be update for eg. daily and kept on a local hard drive? Is it too large? For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in.
  - thaumaturgy 8y ago
    Mostly technical effort. I'm not sure what fire/OES uses for GIS. The system we use does have a locally-hosted option, but that requires someone knowing how to update it and what to do if the server stops behaving. > For a fire department it could be only the area that they operate in. Not really. Mutual aid happens often enough that that's not really a bet you want to make. Especially in the case of CalOES resources, which are sent from disaster to disaster all over the state.

toss1 8y ago

Cut through all the fine legal crap arguments here. 1) Verizon and their ilk are happy to blatantly misrepresent their offerings (and no, fine print footnotes/end notes don't count). 2) Verizon and their ilk, far from being decent corporate citizens and coming to the aid of firefighters, DO NOT CARE care if their misrepresentation gets people killed, as long as they can extract their maximum toll. The business model is not to provide better service in a competitive environment, it is to capture the regulatory agencies so that they can extract the maximum rents, regardless of consequences.

nickodell 8y ago

>Verizon's throttling was described in fire department emails beginning June 29 of this year, just weeks after the FCC's repeal of net neutrality rules took effect. Does throttling in this manner violate network neutrality rules? The 25GB/mo cap is enforced in a way that is neutral to applications or users.

oarsinsync 8y ago
If they provide services that do not count against the 25GB/mo cap (e.g. Verizon's own video streaming service) while other competing services (e.g. Netflix) do, then probably, yes. If not, then probably not, no.

jrockway 8y ago

This seems like the classic case of people relying on intuition instead of the documented SLA. Verizon's plan should be assumed to be a 200Kbps plan that can occasionally burst to 50Mbps. But someone tried it out, and mentally built the model that it was an always-50Mbps plan. Then they were proven wrong during a crisis. I very much agree with other posters that "unlimited" is a very misleading term. If the service runs at 200Kbps, then that's something like 65GB/month, which is not an infinite amount of data. If Verizon sold two "unlimited" plans, one that could be throttled and one that couldn't be, it would be very clear to the customer why the 16TB/month (50Mbps * 1 month) plan was a lot more expensive than the 65GB/month (200Kbps * 1 month) plan. But they hide it all in the fine print, so anyone that doesn't carefully read the fine print and extensively test the service doesn't actually know what they're getting. This is unfortunate. I don't think it's a net neutrality issue (it's not like they were throttled because the traffic was going to Amazon instead of Google), but rather a truth-in-advertising issue.

paulie_a 8y ago
Plans should specifically guarantee an average speed and the maximum amount of data usage available. The term unlimited is blatant false advertising.
briandear 8y ago
The fine print isn’t that fine. It’s pretty clear what you are getting: https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited/
- modeless 8y ago
  No amount of print, fine or otherwise, can justify usage-based throttling on a plan advertised as unlimited. It's false advertising, plain and simple. Verizon has even been punished for false "unlimited" advertising in the past, but they clearly didn't learn their lesson. https://consumerist.com/2007/10/23/verizon-to-pay-1-million-to-customers-after-falsely-advertising-data-plans-as-unlimited/index.html https://consumerist.com/2007/10/23/verizon-to-pay-1-million-...

mirimir 8y ago

Maybe fire departments should throttle responses to fires at Verizon facilities ;)

walshemj 8y ago

And why are there not telecoms contingency plans for natural disasters? where civilian subs would get put to the back of the line or turned off entirely I know some one who did that for BT planning for various civil disasters nuclear melt downs etc - went on some interesting courses apparently.

_bxg1 8y ago

Wait, so what you're telling me is, in the absence of accountability, telecom corporations won't just act in good faith?

DoctorOetker 8y ago

When a Verizon facility catches fire, may the water facility throttle the water supply, demanding upgrades? Can the fire department throttle attention for Verizon's troubles during such a fire?

williesleg 8y ago

I'm pretty sure they should have been fighting fires instead of surfing. What did firemen do 20 years age without iPhones?

johngalt 8y ago

"Critical emergency services fix now! Huge problem! wait what? It costs $60? Well.... Let me see..." It never ceases to amaze me how worked up people can get over an outage, yet still balk at tiny costs. This puts me in the unenviable position of defending Verizon here. People are painting this as Verizon being usurious, and not as a lack of proper capacity planning on the fire departments part. What is the actual problem here? - Verizon wasn't price gouging or changing the terms during a time of emergency. - The emergency services certainly are important, which is precisely why they should be buying the appropriate services for their needs. Rather than blaming Verizon for not giving them a free ride. Verizon has stated terms on their service levels, and what can be expected. They offered to change the service level instantly for the published price. No penalties or special fees etc... While their "Unlimited" verbiage may be misleading to the uninformed, any professional ops person would understand and expect this. Consumer level services built on light usage are a constant thorn in the side of operations people everywhere. It creates extremely flawed expectations on the business side for what reliable/high usage systems cost. I guarantee there was someone in the chain who wanted proper planning on this wireless data service, and was shut down with "whatever, I don't care about all your tech babble just get the $40 plan it works fine for [other use case]." Now rather than take responsibility for the operational failure, the organization blames a vendor for not providing free additional services.

deleted 8y ago
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TheCoelacanth 8y ago
"Unlimited" is not just misleading. It is an outright lie. It is completely false and Verizon knows it is false but continues to call it that because they know it will fool some of their customers.
scrumption 8y ago
Won't someone please think of Verizon's margins?!
onion2k 8y ago
Now rather than take responsibility for the operational failure, the organization blames a vendor for not providing free additional services. Maybe Verizon's salesperson told them it'd only be throttled in non-emergency situations and Verizon would remove the limit in the case of an actual emergency so the cheaper package would be fine as Verizon say themselves in the article.

orf 8y ago

The oes 5262 if anyone is interested: http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20and%20EMS/oes%205262?sort=3&page=1 http://s239.photobucket.com/user/smokeybehr/library/Fire%20a...

thaumaturgy 8y ago

I wonder how many people read the article to the end, let alone the addendum filed by SCCFD [1]. This has nothing to do with the definition of "unlimited" or the fine print for it. OES 5262 (that's a CalOES resource) had sufficient bandwidth for fire response needs up until the Mendocino Complex incident, when their connection was strangled so badly that it wasn't just slow, it was unusable, during a major state disaster. This put a lot of lives directly at risk. Their brief is arguing in support of the lawsuit against the FCC that's attempting to overturn the repeal of net neutrality. They argue that in a deregulated environment, providers like Verizon can and will use disasters to strong-arm responding agencies -- state and local governments -- into paying higher fees. This is well supported by Verizon's emails, which flatly refused to assist SCCFD until they ponied up the extra money for a plan upgrade that they didn't need until the Mendocino fire. The article also adds that the FCC's removal of net neutrality removed the ability for SCCFD to complain to the FCC about this behavior. A few people are saying that maybe the fire department should have more carefully reviewed their plan information, or they should have had more qualified people in IT. Well, maybe. I looked up Eric Prosser's LinkedIn profile, and he's spent his whole career in management. Maybe there was a technical issue, or maybe it was just an oversight. But ultimately it's hard for agencies to attract strong technical talent, especially in Silicon Valley, where so much of that talent is working on the much more interesting problems of squeezing more money out of advertising or debt collections. If you want your first responder agencies to have working technology, get involved. Somewhere in each of those agencies is a human being who may not think about things like bandwidth throttling as carefully as HN's nerds. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire-department-net-neutrality.pdf https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/fire-depa...

tomohawk 8y ago

This is actually an argument against net neutrality. If critical services are to use the internet for comms, then shouldn't these services get higher quality of service? And shouldn't this higher quality cost more?

scarface74 8y ago

Nothing I’m about to write is meant to excuse Verizon. There are two types of “unlimited” when it comes to cell phone plans in the US. - After you go over a certain limit, your data speeds are immediately throttled down to a lower, usually unusable rate. - after you go over a certain limit, your data is “deprioritized” to let less heavy users in the same area have full speed. In the 2nd case, you could go a whole month without being noticeable throttled if you aren’t in a congested area. Unlike wired internet, you can’t just “build more capacity” over the air. There is a theoretical limit on how much bandwidth you can have at a certain frequency range and some frequency ranges aren’t suitable for communications (I know I’m butchering the explanation). The second definition of “unlimited” is defensible because of the reality of delivering data over the air. What Verizon calls “unlimited” is not.

TheCoelacanth 8y ago
There is only one defensible definition of "unlimited" and that is: - Your data is given the same priority for the entire duration of the plan regardless of how much is used. Bandwidth may be decreased because of congestion, but no specific action will be taken to deprioritize it based on usage level. Wireless ISPs may not want to sell plans like that, but that doesn't mean you can redefine the word "unlimited" to mean something different from what it plainly means. If QOS measures are specifically targeted based on whether your usage has crossed a certain threshold, that is clearly a limit.

js2 8y ago

Why are wireless plans sold by data instead of by bandwidth, like wired plans? Don't sell me 20 GB/mo, rather sell me 1.5 Mbps min capacity with the ability to burst if the network isn't congested. It's the bandwidth which is the constrained resource. Obviously there might sometimes be physical factors that prevent even the minimum.

magoon 8y ago

The real problem with the “throttling” is that it slows it down to uselessness.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

a1exus 8y ago

"unlimited" _MUST_ be unlimited, not Verizon unlimited, or any other unlimited!

TechBrendan 8y ago

To me as i build cell phone towers for many carriars i will say this. If each carriar would understand or take in the matter of fact as what do they call unlimited i would like to figure that out. First off text and voice and calls are unlimited but data is never unlimited because there will always be a cap hello people and businesses out there. If we were all smart and we all went to court on this unlimited plan issue we would all be rich. If a plan cost $100 and its unlimted that means there should be no cap on data ussage any time you have an account. I will always also question a cell phone store about unlimited data because it is so totaly false really it is. People have to really look at how much data do we use each day while we have a cell phone. I laugh all sorry to say i know i am in the cell phone world my self i do shake my head alot and i will say this. When or in time will agencies figure this unlimited plans out the right way and not screw people or lower there speeds.

benlorenzetti 8y ago

I can't use every gear ratio on my 18-speed bike but I'm not upset by this relevation.