Verizon claims mobile video experience not affected; some customers disagree.
Is Verizon preparing for the Death of Net Neutrality?
Verizon never warned their customers that they would be performing “tests” for days. Only after being outed, Verizon ADMITTED to throttling NetFlix and YouTube.
This is why America needs Net Neutrality. #BattleForTheNet
Verizon once said it doesn't ”manipulate“ video
"We deliver whatever the content provider gives us. We don’t manipulate the data," Verizon said when it introduced its new unlimited plan in February.
Now that Trump's FCC is about to kill Net Neutrality
The last sentence is total BS. Of course their customers experience was affected. It was Verizon customers who complained to Verizon and then online!
"We've been doing network testing over the past few days to optimize the performance of video applications on our network," a Verizon spokesperson told Ars. "The testing should be completed shortly. The customer video experience was not affected."
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AT&T and the FTC Reach an Agreement to Settle Government Lawsuit Alleging Data Throttling
#ATT Settles #FTC Lawsuit over Alleged #DataThrottling -- #Xanjero
A recent court filing reveals AT&T has reached an agreement with the Federal Trade Commission over the agency’s lawsuit regarding data throttling…
Telecom AT&T has reached a settlement over a FTC lawsuit alleging deceptive data throttling practices. A recently published federal court ruling shows the federal agency and corporation entered into an agreementon August 2nd, requesting a 90-day stay…
My family lives in a small town in eastern North Carolina, and we were just devastated by the hurricane. Our power has been out for five days now and internet service is gone as well. Two days ago my wife and I noticed that we couldn’t retrieve our email from our phone or check Facebook dr updates from our community about the storm or when service would be restored.
We traveled into a bigger town and called Verizon to check and see if there was a data outage and when we could expect it to be restored. Only, I was told that my unlimited plan was deprioritized for being to low tier of a plan. But if I upgraded to a higher plan my service would be restored.
There’s no outage, just corporations sucking dry a community that as already lost so much. Thanks assholes.
The company throttled the data being used by a Santa Clara Fire Department Command and Control vehicle that was fighting the Mendocino Complex of Fires
When executives from Verizon were summoned to California’s capitol Friday to sit for a tongue lashing by an Assembly Committee, the company announced that just hours before, they had changed their policy about limited vs. “unlimited” data for cell phone accounts used by emergency first responders. They had attracted an enormous amount of criticism after the Verizon account used by a Command and Control vehicle working on the Mendocino Complex of Fires in Northern California was victim to having their data rate reduced to 1/200th of their regular rate.
According to The Verge:
The company says it has since removed all speed cap restrictions for first responders on the West Coast and in Hawaii, with the plan to continue doing so during future disasters. Verizon will also launch a new service plan next week that’ll cater to first responders and will feature unlimited data with no caps on mobile solutions. That plan will include priority access.
The Command and Control vehicle’s primary function is to track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed. OES 5262 relies heavily on the internet to do near-real-time resource tracking.
The Santa Clara Fire Department that operates OES 5262 had a Verizon plan advertised as having “unlimited data”. However the fine print in the contract allowed Verizon to throttle the Fire Department’s data to a fraction of the regular rate after a limit was reached.
While fighting the fire, one of the captains operating the equipment complained to Verizon that the command and control unit had been so hobbled that “it has no meaningful functionality”. The battle with the fire morphed into a fight with Verizon as fire department personnel fought with the company about restoring their “unlimited” data rate. Eventually after getting various sections in Verizon and the Fire Department involved, the cell phone plan in OES 5262 was upgraded to a more expensive plan that had more capability.
In a perfect world the fire department might have known in advance that their “unlimited data” was a gross deception by Verizon and could have switched to a more expensive plan that perhaps didn’t have such severe throttling issues. Or, Verizon would not have described the plan as unlimited, since it wasn’t. Or, Verizon could have un-throttled them very quickly after receiving the department’s first complaint and worked out the details later. But none of that happened.
The data rate for a command and control unit was reduced by 1/200th
Verizon’s throttling of data rates used by a fire department that subscribed to one of the company’s “unlimited” plans hampered the firefighters’ command and control at the fire.
While battling the Mendocino Complex, which has become the largest wildfire in the recorded history of California, the Santa Clara Fire Department deployed OES Incident Support Unit 5262, a command and control resource. Its primary function is to track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed. OES 5262 relies heavily on the internet to do near-real-time resource tracking.
This unit and other resources in Santa Clara County use web-based applications that rely on high-bandwidth, latency-sensitive exchanges of information with the public and to provide crucial public safety services.
While fighting the fire the County discovered the Verizon data connection for OES 5262 was being throttled. Data rates had been reduced to 1/200th, or less, than the previous speeds. Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a court filing that the “reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262’s ability to function effectively”. The County has signed on to a legal effort to overturn the Federal Communication Commission’s repeal of net neutrality rules.
A lawsuit over net neutrality sparks allegations of data throttling.
Rowan Walrath at Mother Jones:
In July, while Santa Clara County firefighters were battling the Mendocino Complex Fire, now the largest wildfire in California history, Verizon slowed data service to one of their emergency response vehicles. The telecom then allegedly refused to restore bandwidth until the department bought a new plan that cost more than twice its original one.
That’s according to documents filed as part of a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, which recently decided to rescind net neutrality rules. “In light of our experience, County Fire believes it is likely that Verizon will continue to use the exigent nature of public safety emergencies and catastrophic events to coerce public agencies into higher cost plans ultimately paying significantly more for mission critical service-even if that means risking harm to public safety during negotiations,” Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration filed in federal court in Washington, DC.
The suit was filed on Monday by 22 state attorneys general and other state agencies, including the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, that seek to overturn the FCC’s recent repeal of net neutrality rules. Net neutrality rules implemented under President Barack Obama had prohibited internet providers from slowing down or “throttling” their users’ bandwidth.
Describing how his unit’s internet service had been throttled, Santa Clara County Fire Captain Justin Stockman wrote that a “device that can normally act like a modern broadband internet connection is slowed to the point of acting more like an AOL dial up modem from 1995.” His firefighters first began experiencing problems with internet speeds in the fire department’s command and control vehicle when battling the Pawnee Fire in late June. At the time, according to emails between Verizon and Santa Clara County Fire filed in court, a Verizon representative said the department would need to pay an additional $2 per month to restore the vehicle’s data to its normal speed. “Public safety should never be gated down because of our critical infrastructure need for these devices,” Deputy Chief Steve Prziborowski wrote to Verizon.
In the emails, Verizon confirmed the throttling but would not budge on waiving the price increase. Meanwhile, the vehicle was moved from the Pawnee Fire to the Mendocino Complex Fire, where firefighters continued to experience slow internet speeds. Some began to use their personal devices to send and receive crucial information. As Bowden noted in his declaration, the unit relies on specialized software and Google Sheets to do “near-real-time resource tracking.”
“Dated or stale information regarding the availability or need for resources can slow response times and render them far less effective,” Bowden wrote. “Resources could be deployed to the wrong fire, the wrong part of a fire, or fail to be deployed at all. Even small delays in response translate into devastating effects, including loss of property, and, in some cases, loss of life.”
In his final email to Santa Clara County Fire on July 30, the Verizon representative suggested that the department subscribe to a new data plan that cost more than twice as much as the one it had been using. Only after the fire department bought the plan did the company end the data throttling, Bowden wrote.
Verizon responded in a statement that the refusal to lift the throttle was “a customer support mistake” and that the data service should have been restored to full speed, in keeping with the company’s standard practice in emergency situations. “This situation has nothing to do with net neutrality or the current proceeding in court,” the company wrote.
Yet Santa Clara County Counsel James Williams, who is representing Santa Clara County in the lawsuit against the FCC, blasted that response. “Verizon’s throttling has everything to do with net neutrality,” Williams said in a statement on Wednesday. “That is exactly what the Trump administration’s repeal of net neutrality allows and encourages…In repealing net neutrality rules, the Trump administration failed to consider public safety threats as required by law.”
Verizon accused of throttling Netflix and YouTube, admits to 'video optimization'
Verizon accused of throttling Netflix and YouTube, admits to ‘video optimization’
“Verizon Wireless customers this week noticed that Netflix’s speed test tool appears to be capped at 10Mbps, raising fears that the carrier is throttling video streaming on its mobile network,” Jon Brodkin reports for Ars Technica. “When contacted by Arsthis morning, Verizon acknowledged using a new video optimization system but said it is part of a temporary test and that it did not…
