Verizon Throttled Firefighters' Data As Mendocino Wildfire Raged, Fire Chief Says

npr ^ | 08/22/2018

[GOP Poet]

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[the_daug]

NPR! Ahh have to read more somewhere else.

[frogjerk]

More socialism labeled as “public safety”

[riverrunner]

Don’t they still have radios.

[Myrddin]

Cellular service is a business contract. If you need more, then you need to pay for it. It costs money to put up towers, pull fiber optics and setup switching equipment. There is no right to free bandwidth. The "network neutrality" argument would force Verizon to give away service and bandwidth on equipment they have purchased with capital funds. That equipment is purchased with a specified level of service load and working lifetime. The intent is to earn sufficient review to repay the investment costs and maintenance/operation costs. "Free" service doesn't pay the bills. Net neutrality is fundamentally expropriation of private business assets by government fiat.

[Patriot777]

Buh-bye Verizon—I’m off to find another carrier!

[Presbyterian Reporter]

This is nothing but another excuse being offered by the LibTards to cover up their gross mismanagement of our nation’s forests, allowing arsonist psychos on the streets, and other reasons why we are experiencing more wildfires in the past few years.

[Openurmind]

Yep... Based on the ever present agenda of population control in every form or fashion available...

[humblegunner]

Because nobody ever put out a fire without fast internet.

[Politically Correct]

Oh No! They had to pay money for their data plan!
Oh No! They had to pay money for their fire hoses!
Oh No! They had to pay money for their fire trucks!

[mountainlion]

Buh-bye Verizon—I’m off to find another carrier!

Don't even consider centurylink.

[Billthedrill]

I have personal experience with Verizon wifi as a primary ISP and I would NOT recommend them. Their "unlimited" data plan is a disingenuous misrepresentation - what you get is LTE speeds up to your cap and as soon as that happens they switch you down to 3G speeds at best; in reality that goes down much further. This is not, they insist, "throttling" technically. When I purchased that plan that cap was never mentioned anywhere, not even in the terms of service - it was hastily added when people started complaining, and yes, they have the right to do that.

The corporate line is that this is to ensure that nobody "hogs" the bandwidth, but they'll happily sell you the higher cap for an extra charge, so they can support it technically. I voted with my feet at first opportunity, and AT&T is doing just fine - 10 times the cap for less money. The sad thing is that Verizon's service was quite reliable otherwise and their technical support very good. The price-gouging makes no sense at all unless they're actively trying to drive customers away, which in fact, given that this is an unfavored rural market, they very well may be.

[usconservative]

This is nothing but another excuse being offered by the LibTards to cover up their gross mismanagement of our nation’s forests, allowing arsonist psychos on the streets, and other reasons why we are experiencing more wildfires in the past few years.

Bears repeating. They dont allow management (read that clean-up) of underbrush or dead trees, these out of control wildfires are a natural result of their failed policies.

[mo]

California Fire Admin trying to cover its asses for having “misunderestimated” their bandwidth needs to the detriment of their mission

Idjits. Wankin’ idjits. Refusing to accept responsibility for the consequences of their own poor planning. Somebody elses fault. Always.

And people wonder why California has its own unique brand of problems. Right up their with Detroit and Chicago.

[Nifster]

“Net neutrality” would have made zero difference when dealing with a useless customer rep

[Drango]

See...if we had net neutrality the forest wouldn’t have burned. /s

[IYAS9YAS]

There is no right to free bandwidth.

They're not talking about usage, they're talking about data throttling. If the government has plans with "unlimited data" then the data should be unlimited with no throttling. Same for you or me. If you advertise that capacity, and make me pay a higher price for that capacity, there should be no "throttling" of that capacity because I'm making full use of that capacity.

If the government was on a plan with a data cap, and the government went over its data cap, then the contract would have provided for that, and they'd have been billed for it. But throttling speeds is bovine excrement.

[Haiku Guy]

If a throttling plan is not going to work for you, you should choose a non-throttling plan. Firefighters should realize that throttling plans are not appropriate for their purpose and select a non-throttling plan.

Looks like they went cheap and picked the wrong plan.

[Mariner]

“If you need more, then you need to pay for it.”

The same argument applies to the internet backbone carriers.

Net Neutrality is expropriation of their property. And most of the expropriation is by the CONTENT providers...like Google, Facebook etc.