Verizon Throttles Fire Department Data

[Nowak]

5 minutes ago, 79wjd said:

Considering the throttling ends automatically when the cycle ends, the cycle probably didn't end when they thought it did. 

Considering how Santa Clara Fire is the customer, and has been on this plan for years, they would know when the cycle ends. Verizon didn't honor that end of the plan until they paid for more data. Even in the article, there's an update now with a statement from Verizon, acknowledging that they shouldn't have continued throttling the fire department's data service.

 

Quote

UPDATE: In a statement to Ars three hours after this article was published, Verizon acknowledged that it shouldn't have continued throttling the fire department's data service after the department asked Verizon to lift the throttling restrictions.

 

"Regardless of the plan emergency responders choose, we have a practice to remove data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations," Verizon's statement said. "We have done that many times, including for emergency personnel responding to these tragic fires. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake. We are reviewing the situation and will fix any issues going forward."

Verizon also noted that the fire department purchased a data service plan that is slowed down after a data usage threshold is reached. But Verizon said it "made a mistake" in communicating with the department about the terms of the plan.

 

"We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan," Verizon said. "Like all customers, fire departments choose service plans that are best for them. This customer purchased a government contract plan for a high-speed wireless data allotment at a set monthly cost. Under this plan, users get an unlimited amount of data but speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle."

Verizon is clearly the party at fault here. They admit to it, even.

 

Reading the article helps  

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, NowakVulpix said:

Considering how Santa Clara Fire is the customer, and has been on this plan for years, they would know when the cycle ends. Verizon didn't honor that end of the plan until they paid for more data. Even in the article, there's an update now with a statement from Verizon, acknowledging that they shouldn't have continued throttling the fire department's data service.

 

Verizon is clearly the party at fault here. They admit to it, even.

 

Reading the article helps  

Do you really think there is some asshole sitting a desk turning the throttling on and off? No, it's automatically handled based on the time of the month and the amount of data used. Either they're on the basic non-business unlimited plan, which allows for throttling 24/7 during times of congestion (regardless of whether or not the monthly data cap was reached), or they had the billing cycle mixed up. 

 

They shouldn't have continued throttling because they have a policy to be nice in emergency situations. Not out of an obligation to do so. 

[Nowak]

Just now, 79wjd said:

They shouldn't have continued throttling because they have a policy to be nice in emergency situations. Not out of an obligation to do so. 

And the fire department is very much in the midst of an emergency situation right now.

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, NowakVulpix said:

And the fire department is very much in the midst of an emergency situation right now.

Yes....I never once said Verizon shouldn't be nice. Just that they have absolutely no obligation to do anything and are perfectly within their rights to throttle them.

[Nowak]

Just now, 79wjd said:

Yes....I never once said Verizon shouldn't be nice. Just that they have absolutely no obligation to do anything. 

I'd imagine that an emergency situation would obligate the service provider to waive any restrictions on the service. Sure it might hurt their bottom line a bit but so what? Again, people's right to live comes before a big corporation's ability to turn a profit.

 

Especially when said big corporation continually posts record profits YOY.

[ItsMitch]

44 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

Regardless of the plan emergency responders choose, we have a practice to remove data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations," Verizon's statement said. "We have done that many times, including for emergency personnel responding to these tragic fires. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake. We are reviewing the situation and will fix any issues going forward

42 minutes ago, NowakVulpix said:

Verizon is clearly the party at fault here. They admit to it, even.

I don't think that person in CS will be working for Verizon any longer...... 

[Drak3]

47 minutes ago, 79wjd said:

Just that they have absolutely no obligation to do anything and are perfectly within their rights to throttle them.

If they have an internal policy, they have an obligation to themselves to follow it.

 

But as of right now, we don't know jack shit about what actually happened on Verizon's end. Given that they've followed the policy time and time again before, I'm willing to bet* that no one important at Verizon (that is to say, no one that has the ability) stopped the throttling because they were never informed about the issue to begin with.

 

*One life savings of a typical communist

[Taf the Ghost]

Someone in corporate marketing needs to be fired. This is something that could be turned into such an easy PR Win, but now they have this issue.

[Jito463]

1 hour ago, Celli said:

Look at what @NowakVulpix posted, genius, Verizon acted greedy like usual.

I bet you supported the gutting of Net Neutrality as well, even though Ajit Pai the verizon shill

I see that not a lot of rational thoughts will be forthcoming.....

[Jito463]

22 minutes ago, Sampsy said:

That literally doesn't make sense. It cannot be unlimited if there is a limit. 

"Unlimited" in the sense that you don't get locked out of the data connection after exceeding your monthly allotment.  You can still access the internet, just at a reduced speed.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

"Unlimited" in the sense that you don't get locked out of the data connection after exceeding your monthly allotment.  You can still access the internet, just at a reduced speed.

Sounds a bit like "Unlimited* _{*Limits may apply.}". 

 

Edit:

At least here that sort of thing has always been called and advertised as a capped plan, you can go over the data cap but you get slowed down or have to pay overages. Unlimited has to actually be unlimited otherwise the ISP gets a fine for breaking advertising laws, fair use policies are allowed but they have to be manual reviews and warning letters issued.

[JoostinOnline]

This has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality, but articles keep bringing it up.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

This has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality, but articles keep bringing it up.

Verizon was quite neutral in throttling all data traffic so, hooray Net Neutrality worked!? 

[JoostinOnline]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Verizon was quite neutral in throttling all data traffic so, hooray Net Neutrality worked!? 

It's not violating net neutrality. We have similar rules in the mail system. If I send you a package I can pay extra for two day delivery (just pretend we live in the same country for this analogy). That's business. What CAN'T happen is for them to open up the package after I've paid postage, see its got something valuable in it, and decide to hold onto it for an extra few days unless you pay up.

 

What happened here is the government got a contract with a data cap and said "no fair" when they literally got exactly what they paid for. Given it was an emergency I think Verizon should have immediately stopped throttling so it could be settled later, but that's not the point. This was business, and a totally separate issue. It would only violate net neutrality if the speed had been throttled because of what was being accessed.

 

People are fighting against Net Neutrality laws because garbage news sites have started constantly misusing it. All for the sake of more clicks.

[leadeater]

35 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

It's not violating net neutrality. We have similar rules in the mail system. If I send you a package I can pay extra for two day delivery (just pretend we live in the same country for this analogy). That's business. What CAN'T happen is for them to open up the package after I've paid postage, see its got something valuable in it, and decide to hold onto it for an extra few days unless you pay up.

 

What happened here is the government got a contract with a data cap and said "no fair" when they literally got exactly what they paid for. Given it was an emergency I think Verizon should have immediately stopped throttling so it could be settled later, but that's not the point. This was business, and a totally separate issue. It would only violate net neutrality if the speed had been throttled because of what was being accessed.

 

People are fighting against Net Neutrality laws because garbage news sites have started constantly misusing it. All for the sake of more clicks.

My comment was more just a joke, Verizon was literally being totally neutral to the data on the connection. Nothing selective about a complete throttling on the whole connection, which is exactly what net neutrality is about so I do agree it's rather amusing to see that brought up when the actions taken were in fact neutral.

[mynameisjuan]

7 hours ago, huilun02 said:

I hope those firefighters quit and let the country burn

Well cool fact is that us fighting the fires actually makes them worse year by year.

 

Trying to stop the natural fire that clears out brush and debris and naturally kills smaller clustered trees just adds to it each year and the fires get bigger and bigger. We actually caused our own problem. 

[Sky Spark]

11 hours ago, Jito463 said:

I see that not a lot of rational thoughts will be forthcoming.....

Oh, so you don't think Ajit Pai is a corrupt lying businessman?

[Jito463]

11 hours ago, leadeater said:

Sounds a bit like "Unlimited* _{*Limits may apply.}". 

 

Edit:

At least here that sort of thing has always been called and advertised as a capped plan, you can go over the data cap but you get slowed down or have to pay overages. Unlimited has to actually be unlimited otherwise the ISP gets a fine for breaking advertising laws, fair use policies are allowed but they have to be manual reviews and warning letters issued.

I do wish they would stop calling it unlimited unless it truly was, that said I've learned to just accept it and always read the fine print.  In any event, I rarely use a data connection on my cell phone, so I just go with the cheapest data plan I can.  If I need internet on my phone, I typically have access to a WiFi connection (either at home or at work) so data caps aren't an issue for me.

2 hours ago, Celli said:

Oh, so you don't think Ajit Pai is a corrupt lying businessman?

Whether I do or do not is beside the point, it has no place in this discussion.

[Sky Spark]

4 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Whether I do or do not is beside the point, it has no place in this discussion.

Oh I'd say it very well does

[mynameisjuan]

17 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I do wish they would stop calling it unlimited unless it truly was

Well it is....throttling doesnt stop it from being unlimited. 

[Jito463]

Just now, mynameisjuan said:

Well it is....throttling doesnt stop it from being unlimited. 

*sigh*

I already know that, and explained it above. However, when one thinks of "unlimited", one does not typically add a 'but' to the end of that statement.  I already know how it works, I just wish they'd market it differently.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

*sigh*

I already know that, and explained it above. However, when one thinks of "unlimited", one does not typically add a 'but' to the end of that statement.  I already know how it works, I just wish they'd market it differently.

Welcome to the world of misdirection and borderline, but not quite lying marketing.

[highwolf_x]

3 hours ago, Jito463 said:

*sigh*

I already know that, and explained it above. However, when one thinks of "unlimited", one does not typically add a 'but' to the end of that statement.  I already know how it works, I just wish they'd market it differently.

Unlimited (tm)

[ravenshrike]

On 8/21/2018 at 4:38 PM, asus killer said:

i must assume you have no idea how California weather and drought impacts fires and give you a huge discount on suggesting allowing natural fires to run it's course there.

 

On 8/21/2018 at 4:43 PM, Razor Blade said:

Natural fires are a thing... but combustible man made structures mean that they have to be contained. 

 

Being that the density of trees is actually up, combined with droughts and more sources of ignition (people) it is a real problem...

 

On 8/21/2018 at 5:47 PM, highwolf_x said:

It would be more green if the drought wasn't this bad.

Fun fact, the 20th century was a highly irregular wet period for California. In the past 10,000 years it has had two separate 1000+ year periods of extreme drought conditions. This means, even ignoring lesser droughts, between 1/5th and 1/4 of the time California was in drought conditions.

On 8/21/2018 at 4:47 PM, Dabombinable said:

They do in Australia, and the same would have applied to California in the past. Hell, over here there are a lot of plants and trees adapted to withstand fires, and some can't even germinate without having been through one.

 

They do in the US too. Lodgepole pines in Colorado REQUIRE forest fires to reproduce.

[ivan134]

On 8/22/2018 at 3:05 AM, JoostinOnline said:

This has absolutely nothing to do with Net Neutrality, but articles keep bringing it up.

No rational person is saying it has anything to do with net neutrality. The reason it's being brought up is because the argument against net neutrality has been that we don't need to regulate the market because corporations will do the right thing on their own, because their bottom line depends on it, even if they were a monopoly. This is not the first example, but it is the latest to remind idiots that there is literally zero evidence to suggest that is true, and mountains of evidence suggesting the opposite.