Hey firefighters, Verizon here.. yeah, your throttled, pay up homies

Community Tech Policy & News
21

You might have missed everything else that i said? Maybe i didn’t make it very clear.

The fire department were on a plan that cost them $38/m. Considering that it was restricted in bandwidth they didn’t get a plan sufficient for their need for emergency operations.

It can be argued who’s fault that is, i don’t think it really matters at this point. Nor am i arguing that they don’t have a sim for $38/m

What I am arguing, is that because they seem to be saying they require network connectivity with guaranteed performance for emergency operations, what they likely need is a much more specialised service. Either a critical infrastructure service or something similar to it.

What i’m saying is you don’t get that service for $38/m.

You don’t even know where their contract was from, but you presume they must know about their CRT?

Was it poorly handled, sure. but the fire department is also to blame.

The key fact that seems to be overlooked even though everyone’s been told about it was they already knew this was an issue and didn’t change to a service that provided guaranteed bandwidth.

This just isnt how it works. the simple fact doesn’t change, there is no data limit. There isnt much else to say, that’s just how it works, data and bandwidth are two different measurements. You can get 1kpbs and still not have a data limit.

If your argument were true, then your argument would equally apply if you were getting 10gpbs, because your limited in the maximum amount of data you can download through that bandwidth in a certain amount of time.

You still don’t have a data cap though, you can just keep on downloading.

The argument you likely want to go for is something around service degradation. Or maybe better yet, have them advertise bandwidth not data as the limit.

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22

And now we have something that might, MIGHT, get the republican voters to cry out for net neutrality, and thus force the republicans to do the same.

If this affected soldiers, it would be even better for Net Neutrality.

Failure isn’t just an option, it’s mandatory.

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Well… this is a good argument against net neutrality. You need guaranteed service, your traffic needs to take priority over standard traffic.

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It’s interesting because what people want is consumer data neutrality. Not net neutrality but that doesn’t seem to be what people argue for.

True net neutrality could cripple certain critical systems.

(Getting off topic though maybe)

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I would have expected that to be true for emergency services to begin with. The fact that it isn’t, is disappointing.

Although that DOES create precedent for different rules for government than the population. Although that already exists, example being how cops can speed to catch a fleeing criminal who is exceeding the speed limit.

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In this case it should be true but very likely is simple a matter of the fire department getting the wrong service.

The likely problem was miscommunication on both sides. The fire department it or procurement not understanding fully what they really need and the initial Verizon sales not asking the right questions to get them the right service.

Or perhaps they just picked it out of a government catalogue and never gave it any thoughts.

But when they originally had issues that should have immediately flagged up an issue in the department and it doesn’t look like they took sufficient steps with Verizon to get them on a proper service.

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I hate some of these companies/policies as much as the next guy/gal, but I’m with @Eden here- a fellow contractor had a horror story of building an information system for the government that required “high availability” or some such mention of up-time that came with a bonus, that in hind sight was written far too open ended (was not quantified). There was an outage for about 30 seconds while the backup systems did its thing, the contractor thought “amazeballs, 30 seconds of downtime in a whole year, the downtime caused by a whole data-center going down and we got everything back up and running in under 30 seconds on the backup site- the up-time bonus is ours”. Nope, government said not good enough- lesson learned > quantify everything. Contract should have clearly stated X amount of downtime, or Y percent of up-time or some such black and white quantifiable formula. The FD should have been better with the contract negotiation. If the FD did the latter, they would have grounds to put some city lawyers to work and get money from Verizon for any shortfalls.

Disclaimer- Was an EMT on a 9-11 contracted rig in SoCal, so I would be biased on the FD’s side- but facts are facts. I agree Verizon should have maybe marked the account in some fashion simply to avoid PR fall-out, but meh. Some lazy city workers and/or fire chiefs didn’t spend the time on the contract as they should have.

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Either way, I feel Verizon should be liable for damages to private and government property or any potential damages to such property, as a result of this throttling.

Because Fuck. Them.

29

This already exists, for anyone.

If you really really want to you can give Verizon a bunch of money and they’ll give you a dedicated circuit at whatever bandwidth you want.

Anyone can get that, they’re just expensive.

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30

Downtime is circumstantial, throttling is intentional no matter how you slice it. BIG difference, especially in this case.

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Not necessarily. The fire department would likely be the ones to blame for failure to get a sufficient service from Verizon. There are loads of checks that should have raised red flags and apparently didn’t.

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You are obviously upset and somewhat biased IMO, so getting into an argument over semantics or disputing a 1:1 perfect relationship in an analogy or example is likely in this convo, in which case I check out.

Again I was on a rig, I should be furious, but then I’m old, life experienced- the FD fuc*ed this up, plain and simple. Verizon didn’t do themselves any PR favors but do you think they would loose a court case here?

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33

You aren’t wrong. I’m, doubly biased because i’m in favor of a fire department, and absolutely against the ISP here.

Then again, I’d argue that if the ISP knew it was a fire department or emergency service, they should’ve known that lives could potentially at stake and thus, any action they took to throttle this emergency service would qualify as malicious behavior. This wasn’t just corporate greed, it was outright malicious behavior.

Seriously, you’d think a manager would see “fire department” and have the sense to reach out and say “you guys need X service plan so you never get any throttling or anything, since your service should always be at priority because lives could potentially be at stake”. There is some moral obligation on the part of the ISP here, if they knew it was an emergency service.

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34

They probably should have picked it up and perhaps didn’t ask the right questions. The responsibility is still on the fire department unless they were deliberately miss sold.

At this point it doesn’t even matter as this already happened before and the fire department didn’t fix it. They knew of the limitations and didn’t do anything.

You can’t absolve the fire department of responsibility because they are incompetent. No one would get away with that elsewhere.

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35

x2. Would be interesting to know the whole 200 page version of the story. Meanwhile I’d like to be a fly on the wall in Verizon’s PR office haha.

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Have you ever worked for government before? Incompetence is what they do. And they never get held responsible. I have 4 years of experience to back that up. 2 years at a government run business, and another 2 (going on 3) at a contractor for government organizations.

My point is, if the ISP new it was a fire department, they should have had some imperative to take corrective action, considering the nature of the client, and failure to do so equates to negligence at best.

Sure, the fire department is to blame, but so is Verizon for not being proactive. IF they knew it was an emergency service.

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I’d bet their legal and PR departments are absolutely shitting their pants right now.

No matter what, this looks bad on their part.

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I think Eden is in Europe, I wonder how different their culture and law makes the government cogs work. Last I talked to a GS friend and the VA (Veteran’s Affairs for peeps not in the know) came up, he mentioned how some people of extreme incompetence/neglect of duty get promoted just to get them up and out of the way vs. the difficulty of firing them. There was a word they used for it, but I forget. Just Wow.

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39

this is a mild disturbance at best unless congress starts talking about NN again

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40

Your argument just doesn’t work here. You can’t blame someone else just because you bought the wrong service.

Like you said, the fire department is to blame. While Verizon may also be incompetent they can’t exactly be blamed for providing the service someone asked for.

Bad pr sure, bad communication sure, bad sales sure. Responsible for the fire departments failure to ensure they get the proper service? Not unless they had a contract with the government to ensure agencies get the right service.

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