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> While fire department personnel thought they were already paying for "truly" unlimited data, Verizon said they weren't. Despite the overarching issues here,

> 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.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    I sorta disagree; if Verizon is dishonest and that catches someone off guard, it's not the fault of that party, it's Verizon's fault. Anything else is just victim blaming.
    - kodablah 8y ago
      Sure. Admittedly, I don't really know how to "ask for victim vigilance in hostile environment" without appearing to blame them. The hostile environment is to blame, clearly.
    - whatpad 8y ago
      Your argument would hold water if "victim vs perpetrator" were entirely black and white. Is Verizon not a partial victim for having an unreasonable customer that thinks $39/mo is sufficient for their mission critical communications bottleneck? Isn't Verizon partially a victim of politicians drumming up anger when the government itself contributed to the error by failing to read a contract? You can't just assign the victim label and be done with your argument. There is nuance and shared responsibility. Not everything is an exercise in identifying the victim, therefore the other is the perpetrator, therefore the 'victim' is absolved.
      - Johnny555 8y ago
        Is Verizon not a partial victim for having an unreasonable customer that thinks $39/mo is sufficient for their mission critical communications bottleneck? I think this goes back to the "don't sell an unlimited plan if you're going to insist on limits". Verizon didn't have to call it an unlimited plan, they chose to.
        kodablah 8y ago
        > Verizon didn't have to call it an unlimited plan, they chose to They could have just chosen not to compete in a market with unregulated definitions. You are improperly hating the player and not the game as though it's reasonable for them to not use definitions their competitors use when competing.
- gpm 8y ago
  This is what freedom mobile does in Canada. All their plans say in big letters "250MB" or "2GB" or whatever, and then buried in the fineprint somewhere is "if you go over nothing happens except that we reserve the right to throttle your plan to 256 kbps for the rest of the month, and if you continue using tons of data we reserve the right to further throttle to 32 kbps for the rest of the month". I'm happily living on a 250MB plan.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Huh. I was gonna say it's weird that they'll throttle you a second time, because I don't imagine you could download much at 256kbps even in a whole month of continuous traffic, but I did the math and it turns out you could get about 85GB in 30 days. So I guess that makes sense.
    - userbinator 8y ago
      I still remember the times when a 256K internet connection was not cheap, and ironically also "unlimited" in the sense that you could saturate it 24/7 for the whole month and no one could care less. Many weeks spent waiting for downloads to complete... some from P2P too.
  - yreg 8y ago
    Same in Central Europe.
- sorokod 8y ago
  The power of conditioning! What exactly is the justification for having fine print at all? I mean, if it is important enough to not be omitted...
- rayiner 8y ago
  When you go to the page, you see three options: https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited "Unlimited 4G LTE Data" for $40 "Unlimited 4G LTE Data (22 GB)" for $50 "Unlimited 4G LTE Data (75 GB)" for $60 There is a little (i) symbol next to each one, with a mouse over box that explains the throttling. The throttling is also explained if you click the link "important plan info." The first option could be clearer with a parenthetical, but with the three right next to each other alongside the prices it's pretty clear what you're buying.
  - jonafato 8y ago
    I disagree that it's clear. Words have meanings, and > By "unlimited", we really meant "limited". shouldn't be a valid defense for misleading consumers. The plan would be more accurately described as "15GB 4G LTE Data". If the limits were stated more prominently, the fire departments could have avoided confusion and worked with Verizon or a competitor to get on a plan that wouldn't stop working at the worst possible times. Verizon could have also avoided some bad press by just waiving the fees and sorting things out later instead of demanding extra money during an emergency.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Your definition isn't accurate. That suggests that you don't get 4G speeds after 15GB, which isn't the case.
  - whatpad 8y ago
    That page offers services for personal use. Verizon isn't making an offer to provide services to businesses/government via that page. The appropriate offer is here where you must contact a rep who is probably trained to inquire about the business's requirements: https://www.verizonwireless.com/biz/plans/business-unlimited/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/biz/plans/business-unlimited...
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Commercial/.Gov wireless is different. Verizon and AT&T both offer true unlimited or pooled plans and will even kick off other users to prioritize public safety. I’ve even seen cases where they will roll out temporary towers for emergencies — something is hinky about this story. Although Ars Technica is beating the net neutrality drum, this has more to do with a fire department administrator going cheap on operational costs, or not using the California state contracts. They are using an aircard in a command vehicle, probably with PC, multiple mobile devices and video as well. Just pay the $75 vs $40/mo, and you don’t have this problem.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    They were using the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA) $37.99 unlimited plan for data devices, its a perfectly normal plan. Here in Seattle we use it for our busses WiFi Hotspots, on AT&T it is truly unlimited.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      WSCA allows throttling if you’re a top 5% user locally. Not a problem in the middle of Seattle, but definitely something to plan for a command vehicle responding to wildfires and you have a high density of responders... particularly since the problem is so cheap to fix. Also, another jurisdiction like police, state emergency management, Feds, etc may have a plan that allows them to deprioritize you at any time. If they were in FirstNet, a machine to machine plan, or a Verizon public safety plan, there would be no issue.
unixhero 8y ago
You are correct Sir. In my un-named Scandinavian country with many mountains, we have a dedicated emergency cellphone network. That is the only way.
donohoe 8y ago
They had these services in place. The service was changed after the repeal of Net Neutrality.
- kodablah 8y ago
  True, it did (from congestion-based throttling to data-cap-based throttling), and nefariously so. But that's not my discussion point here. According to the article, they have special services for "public safety services" that this department was not using. Why not? Does their neighboring department? Or the state of CA? Trying to save a buck or general ignorance towards what's available? The general ignorance can be excused due to misleading claims of "unlimited", but I'm saying in this sucky world, they have to overcome that and maybe they can with more research or asking other departments/governments or Verizon themselves.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    These cellular contracts are negotiated under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA), its $37.99 on both Verizon and AT&T for "Unlimited" data. In a prior life I had more overview on these plans, and only Verizon directly throttled these plans, AT&T would let you use hundreds of gigs with no issue. Also, these plans are bespoke and rarely worked with, its likely their Verizon rep didn't bother to look into any of the handful of custom plans that you get as a WSCA account. Another benefit is a flat 25% discount or thereabouts IIRC, any public agency or charity in most states can get these plans FYI.
rayiner 8y ago
Is anybody really confused about what these plans are offering? Especially someone handling IT for a large government entity? The plans say: > Important Plan Information > Unlimited Plans 4G LTE only. During times of congestion, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic (only after 22GB/mo on Beyond Unlimited or 75 GB/mo on Above Unlimited). Beyond that, anybody who is purchasing service for something like a fire department would know the difference between best effort service and a service with an SLA. Consumers will always be best served by having over-provisioning and best-effort service, because their needs are by nature bursty. Put another way, if you build a network that never throttles, you're leaving tons of capacity on the table that would be better used to offer faster burst downloads. That problem is not best-effort service, it's a government entity that doesn't realize it needs a level service with real guarantees.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  > During times of congestion, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic Their complaint is that they were throttled 24/7, not just during congestion. > But while such throttling is generally applied only during times of network congestion, the Santa Clara Fire Department says it was throttled at all times once the device in question went over a 25GB monthly threshold.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    perhaps we should have provable throttling where if your connection is throttled you can prove this to a third party after the fact, and if a service provider is carrying subscriber data, it can prove so to a third party after the fact too. This way when say the fire department notices it's connection is being throttled, yet it suspects the network is not congested, then it can file a complaint after which it is up to the provider to prove it was indeed congested by data from other subscribers (by showing timestamps of hashes of data, signed by subscribers) Before we allow ISP's to (ab)use fires, we should insist on provable congestion. If they refuse to self-regulate the internet traffic in the public interest, then the public interest should move to regulate internet traffic just like it regulates car traffic: priority to emergency services first.
modells 8y ago
The root problems are the LACK of regulation of throttling algorithms, content classes, obsfucated service agreements and enforcing the honesty of claims. Letting telcos "regulate" themselves and take over the FCC (Ajit Pai, et al) leads inexorably to unsustainable collapses and calamities like Enron, not necessarily within the telco arena, but externalities borne out in the real world. No regulation leads to social Darwinian inverted totalitarianism where corporations are free to indirectly exploit, savage and murder whomever doesn't pay.
- briandear 8y ago
  Not true at all. Less regulation leads to multiple market entrants that can compete in price and quality. Over-regulation leads to the opposite of that. Remember how expensive long distance calls used to be? A direct result of regulation, same for regulation over airline routes. Regulation led to monopoly routes that gave Pan Am a monopoly on major international routes, making prices daramtically higher than they are today. To be clear, I am not talking about safety regulation, but competition regulation.
  - brorfred 8y ago
    Why does then EU countries have much cheaper and faster internet and cell data than the US? The market there has much more regulations with one explicit goal being to increase competition.
    - rayiner 8y ago
      > Why does then EU countries have much cheaper and faster internet and cell data than the US? At least as to wired Internet, they don't: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf; https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... see also: https://www.recode.net/2017/12/13/16773062/global-internet-speeds-faster-2017-ookla https://www.recode.net/2017/12/13/16773062/global-internet-s.... The U.S. beats Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, and Italy (the countries comprising the large majority of the EU population). The U.S. is also one of just five countries to have more than 90% LTE coverage: https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte. The big EU countries have faster LTE speeds, but much lower coverage (ranging from 65% in Germany to 83% in Spain).
api 8y ago
They did due diligence. They bought the unlimited plan. "Unlimited" that is not unlimited is not unlimited. It's false advertising.
- briandear 8y ago
  It’s true it is unlimited data, but that doesn’t mean speeds have an SLA.
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
    Unless you posit an infinite period of time, one limits the other quite a bit.
msla 8y ago
> 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? Are you assuming it's possible? First, if they're a monopoly, your "due diligence" is "Yep, we need a service and they're the only ones who provide it. We build our own using money we'll never have or we go with them." Second, cell phone companies are known for lying. Just outright lying. (My proof: If a service is limited, calling it unlimited is a lie.) How can you do due diligence when the party you do it with is lying to you?
brazzledazzle 8y ago
Years ago a company I worked for used a Verizon reseller so they wouldn’t have to deal with the seemingly endless non-service related issues. Great signal/service but atrocious sales and customer service even for business accounts. We paid a premium on top of a premium just so we didn’t have to deal Verizon’s sales/support directly. I doubt it was the best financial decision but being able to get a replacement phone delivered same day/next morning with no questions asked, having billing problems dealt with quickly or issues with the definition of unlimited sorted out in minutes was amazing. That was years ago though so things may be different now.
awesrdtfcvyg 8y ago
This story reminds me of exactly what recently happened to the company I work for. About 2 years ago, a couple employees including myself began working at a new location with no wired internet access. They were given Verizon USB dongles to plug into their laptops. Including those dongles, company-wide there were only a handful of devices on this Verizon plan. Over time, the company got more employees at the new location. We were provided a wireless hotspot (one of the verizon jetpack devices) for everyone in the office to use. Eventually we started getting messages from the company's IT department that we were using too much data. Turns out every single verizon device at the company shared a single 60 GB data cap. Our device alone used like 15-20 GB. It only takes a couple devices used like that to blow past the data cap. Since the company was adding new employees at the new location, as well as giving out more dongles, we managed to get them to switch to a larger data plan. I think it was 80 GB. As you can probably guess, it didn't take long to go over the cap again. Finally, some time late last year we were told by IT that the company switched to an unlimited data plan. No more caps. Fast forward to the last 3-6 months. Like clockwork towards the end of the month the internet is slow as hell in the office. I would clock it in the 20-70 kbps range. We check the display on the hotspot and the data usage section says "Data usage: 26 GB / unlimited". I call our IT department and am told, "that's really strange. Let me call Verizon." The next day IT calls me back. I get told "You're not going to believe this. The company data plan is unlimited. Verizon has a per-device cap at 22 GB, and then they throttle the connection. They want such an exorbitant fee to increase the device cap that it was cheaper for me to order a hotspot for everyone in the office (about 4 or 5 new devices)." Since we had a bunch of local devices set up on the jetpack's LAN, now whenever we hit the 22 GB cap and get throttled, we just swap in a new SIM from another device. It really makes me laugh though, because when we have a few devices using roughly 15-20 GB each, Verizon had no problem letting us blow past the 60 GB data cap. None of the devices throttled the connection. The company would just receive a bill with hefty per-GB overage charges each month. When we switched to the 'unlimited' plan, IT was just as surprised as we were with the throttling. That was the whole point of the 'unlimited' plan. This is one anecdote. But the fire department's experience reminds me way too much of the experience at my company. It's possible that both the fire department IT and my company's IT didn't do their due diligence. But my instinct tells me that verizon doesn't always make it clear that "unlimited data plan" is "unlimited data plan with a per-device cap, and subsequent throttling," especially if you are switching from a capped multi-device plan to an 'unlimited' multi-device plan.
Fellshard 8y ago
Why, it is almost like public services are not incentivized to weigh options and alternatives.
Faark 8y ago
When reading up on of the latter hurricane, i was positively surprised that quite a few US states have laws against price gouging while there is a "state of emergency". Seems like even the US prefers society working together to save lives in cases of emergencies instead of companies using those opportunities to maximize profits. You'd use the same line of argument here, if we are talking about an actual emergency and not just ordinary operations (can see that from the article). I do understand intentional actions like price gouging are worse than keeping the usual automats running. But still, with "state of emergency" in effect, I'd hope for communication companies making all installed (idle) capacity available, even when not payed for.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  My problem with anti-gouging laws as typically implemented is that the threshold for gouging is set too tightly, resulting in hoarding behavior being an entirely rational thing to do. Texas AG warned businesses in a post-hurricane area that if they “raised prices more than 10%, we’re going to look into that.” In such an environment, if I couldn’t be sure when the next supplies were going to be available, it would be entirely rational to buy as many supplies as my family needed for the worst reasonable case. So, right up until the gas, food, and water runs out, I’m buying at a normal price. Now, companies that might be able to truck supplies in from nearby areas (using additional trucks, fuel, and overtime labor) also don’t have a profit motive available to them, because they can only sell at normal+10% prices, which may not cover the genuine increased costs. So in an attempt to protect consumers, we move from a state where supplies are available to those with need (albeit at higher prices) to a state where the quickest, sharpest, and best capitalized get all the food, water, and fuel and none is available at any price. I think the latter state is a less desirable one.
  - Faark 8y ago
    Cmon, your "Atlas Shrugged" level hypothetical is way off of the IMO quite reasonable US implementation summarized on wikipedia[1]. Yes, hoarding can be very bad and thus laws will reflect that. Capitalism & markets are great, but have failure modes we have to be aware of. Emergency situations exhibit many of those and thus it can be beneficial to temporarily suspend usual markets and capitalism on some levels. You cant make an informed purchase decision with no time, information, nothing to trade or a combination of all of those factors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Laws_against_price_gouging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Laws_against_pri...

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.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  I sorta disagree; if Verizon is dishonest and that catches someone off guard, it's not the fault of that party, it's Verizon's fault. Anything else is just victim blaming.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    Sure. Admittedly, I don't really know how to "ask for victim vigilance in hostile environment" without appearing to blame them. The hostile environment is to blame, clearly.
  - whatpad 8y ago
    Your argument would hold water if "victim vs perpetrator" were entirely black and white. Is Verizon not a partial victim for having an unreasonable customer that thinks $39/mo is sufficient for their mission critical communications bottleneck? Isn't Verizon partially a victim of politicians drumming up anger when the government itself contributed to the error by failing to read a contract? You can't just assign the victim label and be done with your argument. There is nuance and shared responsibility. Not everything is an exercise in identifying the victim, therefore the other is the perpetrator, therefore the 'victim' is absolved.
    - Johnny555 8y ago
      Is Verizon not a partial victim for having an unreasonable customer that thinks $39/mo is sufficient for their mission critical communications bottleneck? I think this goes back to the "don't sell an unlimited plan if you're going to insist on limits". Verizon didn't have to call it an unlimited plan, they chose to.
      - kodablah 8y ago
        > Verizon didn't have to call it an unlimited plan, they chose to They could have just chosen not to compete in a market with unregulated definitions. You are improperly hating the player and not the game as though it's reasonable for them to not use definitions their competitors use when competing.
gpm 8y ago
This is what freedom mobile does in Canada. All their plans say in big letters "250MB" or "2GB" or whatever, and then buried in the fineprint somewhere is "if you go over nothing happens except that we reserve the right to throttle your plan to 256 kbps for the rest of the month, and if you continue using tons of data we reserve the right to further throttle to 32 kbps for the rest of the month". I'm happily living on a 250MB plan.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  Huh. I was gonna say it's weird that they'll throttle you a second time, because I don't imagine you could download much at 256kbps even in a whole month of continuous traffic, but I did the math and it turns out you could get about 85GB in 30 days. So I guess that makes sense.
  - userbinator 8y ago
    I still remember the times when a 256K internet connection was not cheap, and ironically also "unlimited" in the sense that you could saturate it 24/7 for the whole month and no one could care less. Many weeks spent waiting for downloads to complete... some from P2P too.
- yreg 8y ago
  Same in Central Europe.
sorokod 8y ago
The power of conditioning! What exactly is the justification for having fine print at all? I mean, if it is important enough to not be omitted...
rayiner 8y ago
When you go to the page, you see three options: https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited "Unlimited 4G LTE Data" for $40 "Unlimited 4G LTE Data (22 GB)" for $50 "Unlimited 4G LTE Data (75 GB)" for $60 There is a little (i) symbol next to each one, with a mouse over box that explains the throttling. The throttling is also explained if you click the link "important plan info." The first option could be clearer with a parenthetical, but with the three right next to each other alongside the prices it's pretty clear what you're buying.
- jonafato 8y ago
  I disagree that it's clear. Words have meanings, and > By "unlimited", we really meant "limited". shouldn't be a valid defense for misleading consumers. The plan would be more accurately described as "15GB 4G LTE Data". If the limits were stated more prominently, the fire departments could have avoided confusion and worked with Verizon or a competitor to get on a plan that wouldn't stop working at the worst possible times. Verizon could have also avoided some bad press by just waiving the fees and sorting things out later instead of demanding extra money during an emergency.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Your definition isn't accurate. That suggests that you don't get 4G speeds after 15GB, which isn't the case.
- whatpad 8y ago
  That page offers services for personal use. Verizon isn't making an offer to provide services to businesses/government via that page. The appropriate offer is here where you must contact a rep who is probably trained to inquire about the business's requirements: https://www.verizonwireless.com/biz/plans/business-unlimited/ https://www.verizonwireless.com/biz/plans/business-unlimited...
Spooky23 8y ago
Commercial/.Gov wireless is different. Verizon and AT&T both offer true unlimited or pooled plans and will even kick off other users to prioritize public safety. I’ve even seen cases where they will roll out temporary towers for emergencies — something is hinky about this story. Although Ars Technica is beating the net neutrality drum, this has more to do with a fire department administrator going cheap on operational costs, or not using the California state contracts. They are using an aircard in a command vehicle, probably with PC, multiple mobile devices and video as well. Just pay the $75 vs $40/mo, and you don’t have this problem.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  They were using the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA) $37.99 unlimited plan for data devices, its a perfectly normal plan. Here in Seattle we use it for our busses WiFi Hotspots, on AT&T it is truly unlimited.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    WSCA allows throttling if you’re a top 5% user locally. Not a problem in the middle of Seattle, but definitely something to plan for a command vehicle responding to wildfires and you have a high density of responders... particularly since the problem is so cheap to fix. Also, another jurisdiction like police, state emergency management, Feds, etc may have a plan that allows them to deprioritize you at any time. If they were in FirstNet, a machine to machine plan, or a Verizon public safety plan, there would be no issue.

unixhero 8y ago

You are correct Sir. In my un-named Scandinavian country with many mountains, we have a dedicated emergency cellphone network. That is the only way.

donohoe 8y ago

They had these services in place. The service was changed after the repeal of Net Neutrality.

kodablah 8y ago
True, it did (from congestion-based throttling to data-cap-based throttling), and nefariously so. But that's not my discussion point here. According to the article, they have special services for "public safety services" that this department was not using. Why not? Does their neighboring department? Or the state of CA? Trying to save a buck or general ignorance towards what's available? The general ignorance can be excused due to misleading claims of "unlimited", but I'm saying in this sucky world, they have to overcome that and maybe they can with more research or asking other departments/governments or Verizon themselves.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  These cellular contracts are negotiated under the Western States Contracting Alliance (WSCA), its $37.99 on both Verizon and AT&T for "Unlimited" data. In a prior life I had more overview on these plans, and only Verizon directly throttled these plans, AT&T would let you use hundreds of gigs with no issue. Also, these plans are bespoke and rarely worked with, its likely their Verizon rep didn't bother to look into any of the handful of custom plans that you get as a WSCA account. Another benefit is a flat 25% discount or thereabouts IIRC, any public agency or charity in most states can get these plans FYI.

rayiner 8y ago

Is anybody really confused about what these plans are offering? Especially someone handling IT for a large government entity? The plans say: > Important Plan Information > Unlimited Plans 4G LTE only. During times of congestion, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic (only after 22GB/mo on Beyond Unlimited or 75 GB/mo on Above Unlimited). Beyond that, anybody who is purchasing service for something like a fire department would know the difference between best effort service and a service with an SLA. Consumers will always be best served by having over-provisioning and best-effort service, because their needs are by nature bursty. Put another way, if you build a network that never throttles, you're leaving tons of capacity on the table that would be better used to offer faster burst downloads. That problem is not best-effort service, it's a government entity that doesn't realize it needs a level service with real guarantees.

gnicholas 8y ago
> During times of congestion, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic Their complaint is that they were throttled 24/7, not just during congestion. > But while such throttling is generally applied only during times of network congestion, the Santa Clara Fire Department says it was throttled at all times once the device in question went over a 25GB monthly threshold.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  perhaps we should have provable throttling where if your connection is throttled you can prove this to a third party after the fact, and if a service provider is carrying subscriber data, it can prove so to a third party after the fact too. This way when say the fire department notices it's connection is being throttled, yet it suspects the network is not congested, then it can file a complaint after which it is up to the provider to prove it was indeed congested by data from other subscribers (by showing timestamps of hashes of data, signed by subscribers) Before we allow ISP's to (ab)use fires, we should insist on provable congestion. If they refuse to self-regulate the internet traffic in the public interest, then the public interest should move to regulate internet traffic just like it regulates car traffic: priority to emergency services first.

modells 8y ago

The root problems are the LACK of regulation of throttling algorithms, content classes, obsfucated service agreements and enforcing the honesty of claims. Letting telcos "regulate" themselves and take over the FCC (Ajit Pai, et al) leads inexorably to unsustainable collapses and calamities like Enron, not necessarily within the telco arena, but externalities borne out in the real world. No regulation leads to social Darwinian inverted totalitarianism where corporations are free to indirectly exploit, savage and murder whomever doesn't pay.

briandear 8y ago
Not true at all. Less regulation leads to multiple market entrants that can compete in price and quality. Over-regulation leads to the opposite of that. Remember how expensive long distance calls used to be? A direct result of regulation, same for regulation over airline routes. Regulation led to monopoly routes that gave Pan Am a monopoly on major international routes, making prices daramtically higher than they are today. To be clear, I am not talking about safety regulation, but competition regulation.
- brorfred 8y ago
  Why does then EU countries have much cheaper and faster internet and cell data than the US? The market there has much more regulations with one explicit goal being to increase competition.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    > Why does then EU countries have much cheaper and faster internet and cell data than the US? At least as to wired Internet, they don't: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf; https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t... see also: https://www.recode.net/2017/12/13/16773062/global-internet-speeds-faster-2017-ookla https://www.recode.net/2017/12/13/16773062/global-internet-s.... The U.S. beats Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, and Italy (the countries comprising the large majority of the EU population). The U.S. is also one of just five countries to have more than 90% LTE coverage: https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte https://opensignal.com/reports/2018/02/state-of-lte. The big EU countries have faster LTE speeds, but much lower coverage (ranging from 65% in Germany to 83% in Spain).

api 8y ago

They did due diligence. They bought the unlimited plan. "Unlimited" that is not unlimited is not unlimited. It's false advertising.

briandear 8y ago
It’s true it is unlimited data, but that doesn’t mean speeds have an SLA.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  Unless you posit an infinite period of time, one limits the other quite a bit.

msla 8y ago

> 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? Are you assuming it's possible? First, if they're a monopoly, your "due diligence" is "Yep, we need a service and they're the only ones who provide it. We build our own using money we'll never have or we go with them." Second, cell phone companies are known for lying. Just outright lying. (My proof: If a service is limited, calling it unlimited is a lie.) How can you do due diligence when the party you do it with is lying to you?

brazzledazzle 8y ago

Years ago a company I worked for used a Verizon reseller so they wouldn’t have to deal with the seemingly endless non-service related issues. Great signal/service but atrocious sales and customer service even for business accounts. We paid a premium on top of a premium just so we didn’t have to deal Verizon’s sales/support directly. I doubt it was the best financial decision but being able to get a replacement phone delivered same day/next morning with no questions asked, having billing problems dealt with quickly or issues with the definition of unlimited sorted out in minutes was amazing. That was years ago though so things may be different now.

awesrdtfcvyg 8y ago

This story reminds me of exactly what recently happened to the company I work for. About 2 years ago, a couple employees including myself began working at a new location with no wired internet access. They were given Verizon USB dongles to plug into their laptops. Including those dongles, company-wide there were only a handful of devices on this Verizon plan. Over time, the company got more employees at the new location. We were provided a wireless hotspot (one of the verizon jetpack devices) for everyone in the office to use. Eventually we started getting messages from the company's IT department that we were using too much data. Turns out every single verizon device at the company shared a single 60 GB data cap. Our device alone used like 15-20 GB. It only takes a couple devices used like that to blow past the data cap. Since the company was adding new employees at the new location, as well as giving out more dongles, we managed to get them to switch to a larger data plan. I think it was 80 GB. As you can probably guess, it didn't take long to go over the cap again. Finally, some time late last year we were told by IT that the company switched to an unlimited data plan. No more caps. Fast forward to the last 3-6 months. Like clockwork towards the end of the month the internet is slow as hell in the office. I would clock it in the 20-70 kbps range. We check the display on the hotspot and the data usage section says "Data usage: 26 GB / unlimited". I call our IT department and am told, "that's really strange. Let me call Verizon." The next day IT calls me back. I get told "You're not going to believe this. The company data plan is unlimited. Verizon has a per-device cap at 22 GB, and then they throttle the connection. They want such an exorbitant fee to increase the device cap that it was cheaper for me to order a hotspot for everyone in the office (about 4 or 5 new devices)." Since we had a bunch of local devices set up on the jetpack's LAN, now whenever we hit the 22 GB cap and get throttled, we just swap in a new SIM from another device. It really makes me laugh though, because when we have a few devices using roughly 15-20 GB each, Verizon had no problem letting us blow past the 60 GB data cap. None of the devices throttled the connection. The company would just receive a bill with hefty per-GB overage charges each month. When we switched to the 'unlimited' plan, IT was just as surprised as we were with the throttling. That was the whole point of the 'unlimited' plan. This is one anecdote. But the fire department's experience reminds me way too much of the experience at my company. It's possible that both the fire department IT and my company's IT didn't do their due diligence. But my instinct tells me that verizon doesn't always make it clear that "unlimited data plan" is "unlimited data plan with a per-device cap, and subsequent throttling," especially if you are switching from a capped multi-device plan to an 'unlimited' multi-device plan.

Fellshard 8y ago

Why, it is almost like public services are not incentivized to weigh options and alternatives.

Faark 8y ago

When reading up on of the latter hurricane, i was positively surprised that quite a few US states have laws against price gouging while there is a "state of emergency". Seems like even the US prefers society working together to save lives in cases of emergencies instead of companies using those opportunities to maximize profits. You'd use the same line of argument here, if we are talking about an actual emergency and not just ordinary operations (can see that from the article). I do understand intentional actions like price gouging are worse than keeping the usual automats running. But still, with "state of emergency" in effect, I'd hope for communication companies making all installed (idle) capacity available, even when not payed for.

sokoloff 8y ago
My problem with anti-gouging laws as typically implemented is that the threshold for gouging is set too tightly, resulting in hoarding behavior being an entirely rational thing to do. Texas AG warned businesses in a post-hurricane area that if they “raised prices more than 10%, we’re going to look into that.” In such an environment, if I couldn’t be sure when the next supplies were going to be available, it would be entirely rational to buy as many supplies as my family needed for the worst reasonable case. So, right up until the gas, food, and water runs out, I’m buying at a normal price. Now, companies that might be able to truck supplies in from nearby areas (using additional trucks, fuel, and overtime labor) also don’t have a profit motive available to them, because they can only sell at normal+10% prices, which may not cover the genuine increased costs. So in an attempt to protect consumers, we move from a state where supplies are available to those with need (albeit at higher prices) to a state where the quickest, sharpest, and best capitalized get all the food, water, and fuel and none is available at any price. I think the latter state is a less desirable one.
- Faark 8y ago
  Cmon, your "Atlas Shrugged" level hypothetical is way off of the IMO quite reasonable US implementation summarized on wikipedia[1]. Yes, hoarding can be very bad and thus laws will reflect that. Capitalism & markets are great, but have failure modes we have to be aware of. Emergency situations exhibit many of those and thus it can be beneficial to temporarily suspend usual markets and capitalism on some levels. You cant make an informed purchase decision with no time, information, nothing to trade or a combination of all of those factors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Laws_against_price_gouging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging#Laws_against_pri...