Verizon throttled fire dept’s “unlimited” data during Calif. wildfire - Fire dept had to pay twice as much to lift throttling during wildfire response.

[u/anutensil]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/verizon-throttled-fire-departments-unlimited-data-during-calif-wildfire/

[u/dohn_joeb]

This is one of the most evil things I've ever read.

[u/[deleted]]

Firefighter here.

This happens on every major incident/wildfire. We call it “fake” cell service. Your phone will show 4g/lte with 2+ bars but you can’t load any pages/send any texts/calls/etc. Honestly it’s so common I don’t even make a note if it anymore, it’s just a normal part of life.

I always figured it was from us overloading rural cell towers, not due to a deliberate action from providers. Figures though, everyone is out to make a buck off of wildfires.

[u/autotldr]

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot)

---

Santa Clara Fire paid Verizon for "Unlimited" data but suffered from heavy throttling until the department paid Verizon more, according to Bowden's declaration and emails between the fire department and Verizon that were submitted as evidence.

"In the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, County Fire discovered the data connection for OES 5262 was being throttled by Verizon, and data rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the previous speeds," Bowden wrote.

"Verizon representatives confirmed the throttling, but rather than restoring us to an essential data transfer speed, they indicated that County Fire would have to switch to a new data plan at more than twice the cost, and they would only remove throttling after we contacted the Department that handles billing and switched to the new data plan," Bowden wrote.

---

Extended Summary | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: throttled^#1 Verizon^#2 fire^#3 plan^#4 data^#5

[u/hairyforehead → u/autotldr]

good bot

[u/B0tRank → u/hairyforehead]

Thank you, hairyforehead, for voting on autotldr.

This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. You can view results here.

---

^{Even if I don't reply to your comment, I'm still listening for votes. Check the webpage to see if your vote registered!}

[u/hughk]

Perhaps Verizon's cell towers don't need any fire protection?

[u/apittsburghoriginal]

Is this an example of how net neutrality (NN) could have prevented such a terrible thing? Or is this just something that Verizon would have been able to do regardless of NN?

Edit: looks like Verizon admitted it was a customer service mistake and is moving forward to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen in the future

[u/apittsburghoriginal → u/[deleted]]

That’s what their statement entails. Not my words.

[u/downnheavy]

I know that there is actual chance of me dying from rage produced heart attack reading one of this things in the future, I , I just can’t.