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Plenty of consumers have encounter mobile data caps, and the availability of "unlimited" plans doesn't guarantee you a truly unlimited experience. Carriers all the same regularly throttle users who consume what the carrier considers "besides much" data, and a California fire department can tell yous how frustrating that is. While personnel from the Santa Clara Fire Department were busy fighting wildfires in California, they were also forced to fight Verizon to get plenty bandwidth for their equipment.

Santa Clara County Fire Primary Anthony Bowden filed a legal brief in support of 22 state attorneys full general who are seeking the reversal of the recent net neutrality repeal. In his argument, Bowden explains how Verizon essentially crippled 1 of the department'due south vehicles, which uses a Verizon mobile LTE hotspot. The vehicle, designated OES 5262, is a mobile command and control heart the department deploys to dangerous areas. On June 29th of this year, burn department officials realized the vehicle'south LTE connection had dropped to 0.five pct of its usual speed. This fabricated it incommunicable to effectively coordinate resources attempting to control the wildfires.

According to Bowden, the section was paying Verizon for "unlimited" data on the LTE hotspot, simply the line had crossed 25GB in a unmarried billing cycle. That's when Verizon begins throttling lines, just that'south technically only supposed to happen when the network is congested. Bowden claims this was a total, across-the-lath downgrade in service. After contacting Verizon, the department was told the throttling would not be lifted until it moved the line to a new plan that cost twice equally much. The department somewhen relented when the same matter happened during the next billing cycle equally the department worked to contain the Mendocino fire.

This effect took place soon after the FCC's net neutrality repeal went into consequence. While throttling was allowed earlier the repeal, it'southward important hither for two reasons. First, the net neutrality complaint organisation was scrapped along with the regulations, eliminating an important avenue for the department to get its concerns addressed. More importantly, the net neutrality repeal was sold past FCC chair Ajit Pai equally a mode to ensure critical services similar fire departments could go the bandwidth and network priority they needed. That doesn't seem to be the case.

Verizon claims to have a policy of lifting throttling restrictions for emergency services upon request, but that didn't happen here. Verizon says it's investigating. In addition, Verizon admits that it made a fault in communicating the terms of the plan. That's no surprise. Simply like with its consumer plans, Verizon is calling its plans "unlimited" when they clearly are not.

Now read: 21 States Sue to Finish Net Neutrality Rollback, The FCC Thinks American Broadband Standards Are Way Too Fast, and Cablevision Lobby Claims Us Is Just Bursting With Broadband Competition