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California wildfires: Verizon throttled data during crisis
Santa Clara County's fire chief has complained the company throttled an emergency vehicle's data rate to about 0.5% of its normal level.
The limit was enforced despite Verizon being told it was hampering efforts to tackle the wildfire.
Verizon said a mistake had been made.
However, it highlighted that the fire department had subscribed to a contract that stated data throughput would be cut after a usage limit had been hit.
"Regardless of the plan emergency responders choose, we have a practice to remove data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations," a spokeswoman told the Mercury News newspaper.
"In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us.
"We are reviewing the situation and will fix any issues going forward."
Verizon Throttled Fire Department's "Unlimited" Data During Calif. Wildfire
Verizon Wireless' throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.
"County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services."
Bowden's declaration was submitted in an addendum to a brief filed by 22 state attorneys general, the District of Columbia, Santa Clara County, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, and the California Public Utilities Commission. The government agencies are seeking to overturn the recent repeal of net neutrality rules in a lawsuit they filed against the Federal Communications Commission in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
"The Internet has become an essential tool in providing fire and emergency response, particularly for events like large fires which require the rapid deployment and organization of thousands of personnel and hundreds of fire engines, aircraft, and bulldozers," Bowden wrote.
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.
The throttling recently affected "OES 5262," a fire department vehicle that is "deployed to large incidents as a command and control resource" and is used to "track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed," Bowden wrote.
"OES 5262 also coordinates all local government resources deployed to the Mendocino Complex Fire," an ongoing wildfire that is the largest in California's history, Bowden wrote.
The vehicle has a device that uses a Verizon SIM card for Internet access.
"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. "These reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262's ability to function effectively. My Information Technology staff communicated directly with Verizon via email about the throttling, requesting it be immediately lifted for public safety purposes."
Verizon did not immediately restore full speeds to the device, however.
"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.
Because the throttling continued until the department was able to upgrade its subscription, "County Fire personnel were forced to use other agencies' Internet Service Providers and their own personal devices to provide the necessary connectivity and data transfer capability required by OES 5262," Bowden wrote.
[...] Santa Clara apparently switched to the $99.99 plan, more than doubling its bill. "While Verizon ultimately did lift the throttling, it was only after County Fire subscribed to a new, more expensive plan," Bowden wrote in his declaration.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @07:54PM
So, we throttled the Fire Department during a Fire so some rich SOB could teleconference?
\
Geez...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:02PM (9 children)
I think the mistake made was believing Verizon when they said the contract was unlimited
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sulla on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:07PM
The complaint to me seems like it was speed and not about connection, did the firefighters ever lose their connection? Unlimited uptime!
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:45PM (7 children)
This is the same Verizon [blogspot.com] who thinks that .002 dollars is the same amount of money as .002 cents. It's hard to know which is greater, their "don't know" or their" don't care".
Lives and structures already lost because of delayed fire service are just too bad, but going forward they will totally fix any issues they cause.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:19PM (6 children)
Lives and structures lost because they couldn't get a tweet out?
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:55AM (5 children)
Quoting TFS about command-and-control vehicle OES 5262, which uses a Verizon SIM with "unlimited" service for its Internet connection:
You tweet, the president tweets, these guys control fire response over Internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @05:33AM (3 children)
Perhaps they shouldn't have been watching movies over that connection during "down" times.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:30PM (2 children)
Perhaps, perhaps not; you're right there. But whether they were watching movies, torrenting firefighter fanfiction, or whatnot, something that is a "for sure" and not a "perhaps" is this:
Your no-movies argument boils down to "they should have known Verizon was incompetent", which, to be honest, is about right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:23PM (1 child)
I'm just suspicious of what they were doing to exceed the data caps. Advertised caps before carriers drop your speed are usually 2-4 GB/month. AFAIK it pretty much requires media consumption to reach that level. Charitably considering that they may have been sending work related documents, that would be 2000 1-megabyte M$-Word documents.
If they really need that much more, let them (us) pay for the extra capacity. Nothing is unlimited, and if there is no expectation of being capped, people will abuse it.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:35PM
Professional firefighting consists of probably 90% sitting around bored, watching
TVNetflix and waiting for a call, and perhaps 10% critical, life-threatening action.I wouldn't suspiciously begrudge firefighters the former, considering that they provide the latter unhesitatingly.
I concur, however, that their $50/mo. data plan was apparently not suitable for its intended use. Maybe the $100/mo. plan, that they bitterly complain has "doubled" their cost, will be more suitable.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:28PM
I get the idea of throttling logically, but damn. At that point you may as well just cut them off entirely. It wouldn't kill these jerks to throttle at a more usable level like even 1/20th.
Presumably they're not just cutting them off totally in their continuing effort to bend the definition of "unlimited" over a table. "We're not technically lying..."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Wednesday August 22 2018, @08:45PM (3 children)
Or maybe not, but quite possible.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:10PM (2 children)
You speak of a data limit, on a plan that was unlimited.
For a large Verizon price I will sell you a 2 liter bottle containing an infinite amount of Diet Coke. But then AT&T would say I stole their idea.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 3, Funny) by RandomFactor on Wednesday August 22 2018, @10:07PM (1 child)
Unlimited Cosmic Data Limit!!! (itty bitty data pipe) -NetGenie
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:33PM
The word Phenomenal goes in there somewhere.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:08PM (5 children)
So the contract said one thing.
The marketing materials said unlimited.
Shouldn't this be a simple case of false advertising? Clearly deceptive and fraudulent.
I remember someone once nitpicking over what the definition of "is" is, or whether a cigar or other playing actually means sex. That seems as deceptive and dishonest as the "unlimited" data. Neither one should be trusted.
Why is it that when I hold a stick, everyone begins to look like a pinata?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:42AM (3 children)
The entire gamut of "broadband" suppliers needs to be hammered with a 'truth in advertising' class action lawsuit. And, that suit needs to be vigorously pursued, all the way up through the court system.
It matters little whether your "broadband" is 2mb (in my case) or 2gb or 500tb - it it's what the supplier advertised, it's what you should be getting. In effect, what we have is, "If you pay premium prices, then we'll try to get you really fast speeds, sometimes, but if you actually use those fast speeds even a little, we'll cut you back to nothing."
For many people, 10mb is quite good enough. For other people, 50mb is good. For families, businesses, schools, neither of those is an option.
If the suppliers don't have the supplies they are offering for sale, then they need to be burnt. In no other business can you sell the same item to multiple people, then punish those people for not sharing.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
They can't be hit with a class-action from their customers because the fine print of all their service contracts says "no class action lawsuits allowed", and the Supreme Court has not only said that's totally fine, it's applies even if state laws ban that kind of rule. Your only options when dealing with these companies are:
1. Not use their service.
2. Go through a binding arbitration process where the company gets to pick the arbitrator (which I'm sure in no way affects the impartiality of that hearing), and all you can possibly win is what you paid the company for the service in question. Oh, and then they'll either throttle your service or cut it off completely, and there is still no legal recourse.
And that's true even if you're talking about something that's considered a public utility, like the telephone system.
Welcome to the US legal system post 2010 or so.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:21PM (1 child)
I am entirely unsatisfied with that legal nonsense, and it needs to be established that the Supremes aren't the final law. Congress can easily pass a law nullifying such clauses. If they did so, the Supremes could say nothing.
Unfortunately, congress got us into most of our messes.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:40PM
Hey, leave Diana Ross out of this!
But yes, this is something Congress could conceivably fix, but chooses not to, for some reason [opensecrets.org].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @06:42AM
TL;DR Their contracts stipulate they can change the details of the data plan one sided so they effectively can promise and sign on whatever they want and then deliver whatever they feel like. As for how that ever been made legal, the issue was that utility bills needed to change minor billing charges occasionally and renegotiating contracts with millions of customers was too impractical since it wasn't like people could switch to a different provider. That is, the original sin was not identifying them as monopolies then and their, nationalize the fuck out of them and make their "billing" officially the tax you can't help but pay that it already is.
So now congress is, again, avoiding the tough decision by reintroducing net neutrality. A shitty law meant to patch a hole in the shitty legal framework they broke and are unwilling to fix. Get it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:20PM (6 children)
Yep, unlimited should be unlimited.
OTOH who doesn't know that Verizon has no such thing as an unlimited plan? That any and all plans are subject to throttling and restriction? Does anybody competent not know this? (And yep, I'm running a No True Scotsman risk, but I think it's justified in this case).
Given that, the real question is what bright brain thought that the command and control vehicle for Los Angeles County Fire could get by with a $99 or less per month data plan????? I'd like that person's job because I know I can do better at it with some simple critical thinking.
And what brighter brains decided that for vital public service communication such links should go through any commercial provider? Can't they roll their own countywide data network? And the answer today is "probably not" when the answer of yesteryear was, "Hey, that's probably too important to just rely on a commercial provider's solution. At least not without any backup plan whatsoever."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Knowledge Troll on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:32PM (4 children)
I'm glad someone else said it. Fault lies with who ever failed to vet the terms of service associated with a life critical service.
Verizon sucks. Verizon should have immediately given the fire department unrestricted access and told them to work out the details later.
But the details are to have the right subscription to an appropriate class of service to fit their use case.
It is negligent to depend on a service for life and safety and not read the terms of the contract. Who ever bought the service is at fault.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Wednesday August 22 2018, @11:45PM (3 children)
In other forums, people have stated that Verizon changed the terms of their "unlimited" plan.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Thursday August 23 2018, @12:19AM
We can speculate all we want about what their agreement was but what matters is what was in the contract that was agreed to by the fire department and Verizon. I don't have that verbiage and I doubt anyone here does.
We don't have to speculate that the fire department's job is to ensure the contract not only specifies 100% throughput all the time but that for the duration of the contract that the terms do not change. Further that the remedy for the violation of the contract is in the millions of dollars per hour because of the risk to life and safety.
Considering the fire department is taking to Twitter instead of the courts to get remedy tells me they don't have provisions like that. They are deflecting blame for their incompetence.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:10AM (1 child)
So many contracts, we say we can change the contract whenever we want. But there's always, the other side can cancel when you do that. If Verizon changed, brave First Responders -- or you or I -- can look at that and say, "oh, should we stick with this one, or, try another?" And get out of the contract if they want to.
There's no excuse for it. California is the home of terrible government. I said, California is a State of emergency. And I'm sending so much money to them -- YOUR money. Possibly, not a good idea. I'm sending them all this money, and they're getting a VERY CHEAP cell phone plan. Where's your money going?
By the way, so many fires, while they divert MASSIVE amounts of water into Pacific Ocean. They call it "rivers," I call it VERY FOOLISH. Tree clear, put water where trees were -- not in ocean. No more fires. Easy!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:19AM
as lulzy as these posts are, I refuse to believe that Trump would type this
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:18AM
https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/unlimited/ [verizonwireless.com]
What's that? Says unlimited but isn't? Where I come from we call that "fraudulent advertising." Note the "fraud" part of that.
You or I commit fraud against Verizon? Prison time. Verizon commits fraud against tens of millions of people? *yawn*
Forget net neutrality, I want justice neutrality.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mrpg on Wednesday August 22 2018, @09:52PM
"Mistakes were made" is an expression that is commonly used as a rhetorical device, whereby a speaker acknowledges that a situation was handled poorly or inappropriately but seeks to evade any direct admission or accusation of responsibility by not specifying the person who made the mistakes. The acknowledgement of "mistakes" is framed in an abstract sense, with no direct reference to who made the mistakes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistakes_were_made [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22 2018, @11:38PM
Well, that's what you'll get with Net Neutrality!
All packets are the same. The fire deparatments packets get no more preference than porn videos.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:58AM
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Username on Thursday August 23 2018, @01:48PM
https://www.fcc.gov/public-safety/public-safety-and-homeland-security/policy-and-licensing-division/public-safety-spectrum [fcc.gov]
AND THEY DON’T EVEN FUCKING USE THEM.
Honestly, WTF? Let’s attach our mutimillion dollar command station ONLY to the internet and hope it doesn’t go down? Hope we don’t become part of a botnet? Hope the ISP doesn’t go out of business? I have no idea how they can spend so much and not even have their own network. It’s not that hard to switch LTE devices to your own frequency. Not that expensive either.
(Score: 5, Funny) by BananaPhone on Thursday August 23 2018, @02:22PM
Imagine if Verizon's CEO's house was on fire and the firemen throttle the water pressure to the hoses used to put out the fire.
That would be karma.