Firefighters Claim Verizon 'Throttled' Service During Mendocino Fire
IRVINE (CBSLA) — Some firefighters battling the Mendocino Complex Fire say they were throttled by the carrier Verizon.
In other words, they say the unlimited plans they paid for were slowed down by Verizon because they were using too much data. When firefighters asked Verizon to un-throttle their service, their fees tripled.
The Santa Clara County fire chief wrote in a declaration that Verizon knowingly throttled crisis response and essential emergency services. That declaration has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.
In a statement, Verizon said the case has nothing to do with net neutrality. A spokesperson wrote:
"We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan...speeds are reduced when they exceed their allotment until the next billing cycle...we have a practice to remove data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations. In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us."
Orange County Fire Authority describes the use of cellular data when it comes fighting fires as "life saving." It can mean the difference between life and death.
While OCFA is one of the largest fire agencies in the state, and Verizon is their carrier, they have never been throttled. Data, they say, is their most effective tool to fight fires.
"We know what the fire's doing, what the wind's doing, what it's gonna do," said Tony Bommarito, OCFA. "Then the fire behavior people plug numbers in, real time fuel moistures, real time relative humidity, temperatures, wind, and actually predict what the fire's gonna do. If we don't have that data, or it's slowed down and we are unable to predict that fire behavior it puts us back 30 years."