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FCC blasted for "shameful" ruling against cities and fire department:
The Federal Communications Commission is in another dispute with the fire department that fought for net neutrality rules after being throttled by Verizon during a wildfire response.
The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, along with the cities of Los Angeles and New York, last week asked the FCC to extend a deadline for filing comments on the last remaining piece of FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal. Pai had to seek another round of public comments on the net neutrality repeal and related deregulation of the broadband industry because federal judges who upheld the overall repeal ruled that Pai "failed to examine the implications of its decisions for public safety."
The fire department and cities said they couldn't meet the FCC's comments deadline because of the coronavirus pandemic. But the FCC refused to grant more time for filing comments in an order issued yesterday, resulting in condemnation from the Santa Clara County Fire Department, Democrats, and consumer advocates.
"When the Trump FCC repealed net neutrality two years ago, it completely ignored public safety," US Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said. "Santa Clara County firefighters paid a steep price when Verizon throttled their data speeds as they fought the worst fire in California's history, and the County was helpless to resolve the issue... Now, when these same first responders of the Santa Clara County Fire Department are requesting a very reasonable extension to file their comments in the FCC's order because they are on the front lines in responding to the worst pandemic of our lifetimes, Chairman Pai has ignored their pleas. The FCC's decision is shameful, offensive, and dangerous. The FCC must rethink this decision immediately."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2020, @03:51PM (1 child)
Pretty much. Right now, you've go ISPs like comcast removing their broadband caps and shockingly the network seems to be holding up just fine on their end. A few websites are slower than usual, but those are on the server end, not my internet connection is.
It just reveals that these caps are a scam to begin with, they should be a soft cap where they can throttle certain accounts after a certain point, but only if needed to maintain service to others. Capacity is capacity and whether it's all being used or none of it's being used, makes relatively little difference in terms of how much it costs. You still need the hardware in place in case demand spikes to cover the promised capacity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2020, @04:07PM
Bbut... then how can they innovate with bundles?