the biggest issue here and the arguments that abound is Yes emergency services do need unfettered service! But you take into consideration cost as well.
now i hear a lot of you spouting off about lazy chiefs and such but heres the crux of it.
do any of you realise just how much our gear cost and how much companies are @SS raping our funds for? Typical turnout gear can exceed almost 4 grand per person. that does not include training, engines, utilities, insurance, and uniforms.
sure some departments are paid and funded by the city and or state! But try to be a volunteer dept and have to compete for grants like all the rest do!
If you think finances are difficult in a paid dept you have a lot to learn when it comes to volunteers!
giving registered ems and fire services a small discount on an unfettered service would be one hell of a great pr move for verizon or any other carrier. But the odds of that happening isn’t very realistic.
thats called procurement contracting and any school admin who signs one needs to be fired.
procurement contracts are golden opportunities for companies to line their pockets at the state or governments expense. and through the state or government the cost is passed on to us the taxpayers.
I don’t think anyone has said this. Certainly not me. What i did say what the person who was to procure the service didn’t do their due diligence. Do they cut corners on their fire gear?
This isnt a volunteer fire department either, so the excuse for that doesn’t cut it.
There technology people failed to do their job.
And by the sounds of it, they either got rid of the guy or were even more ill prepared and never had someone.
some one did post that phrase about lazy chiefs thats why i responded that way!
whether its a paid department or a volunteer department Do we need to hire lawyers to read every contract?
seems like we need to, but with finances being tight in almost every department where can we find a lawyer that can be easily afforded? Hell there are departments closing because they cant afford to keep running
an isp or phone network provider should make emergency services aware of restrictions and speciality services regardless of whether the fd or ems knows about it.
with the current situation of the fires going on out there verizon should have automatically lifted the restriction but they didn’t
and as far as calling them incompetent, what makes a chief is there ability to assess an emergency scene and make the snap decisions of directing their crews, and not how well they can read the mumbo-jumbo of contracts
all well and good i see a lot of finger pointing here but not a lot of efforts to provide a valid solution. many departments have their services decided upon by city councils and are restricted to their decisions so many of us have no choice in the service!
IT People! many small departments do not have IT unless someone donates their time to do it.
a lot of my spare time is spent repairing radios, pagers, lighting equipment, alarm systems, and the companies computers. So Im the IT guy
Even though it has nothing to do with net neutrality
@Gnuuser Verizon are equally to blame for their failings as also mentioned. But your grabbing at straws to make up excuses for the fire department. Their chief has nothing to do with it, they don’t have some guy who knows computers doing IT they have an IT department, read the job posting, it’s not some out of high school position. It’s also not the only IT position they have for their department.
And yes, if the contract is important enough of course you have a lawyer look at it if you don’t know how.
There is zero reasons to make excuses, the fire department is to blame for their failings in this just as Verizon is.
I’ll take the hit there @Gnuuser. I can’t speak for volunteer departments as I am out of LA County- I know the vast majority across the nation are volunteer, but SoCal is highly paid- there are some Chiefs on retirement cruise control- but I don’t want to get into a debate about outliers, like the amount of burnt out EMT-Ps vs. ones still hard charging- its neither here nor there. For agencies as large as county FDs in SoCal, the persons present at picking this plan should have had some level of qualifications and due diligence as @Eden better articulates it. Hell, CSULA has a fricken BS in Fire Administration and Technology (the point of stating this is there is demand to justify this curriculum that was made ideally to give aspiring captains a leg up to promote = the competition is high, expectations for what leaders bring to the table also high)- ask me why I know!!
Right, but what plans qualifies for drone coverage? I’d be curious if Verizon will inform their first responders whether their plan actually qualifies for drones, or anything else.
A government emergency services plan with a provider directly if allowed or via contacts available from your state gov, or via first net, or similar providers that have emergence services options.
Both AT&T and Verizon have land and air COWs.
It depends how you get it, anyone that has worked in large organisations knows its not that simple. almost all the time you get what you ask for, that’s already been discussed at length.
TL;DR: government sucks because it can be a nightmare to go through procurement, the fire department sucks because they skimped on getting a proper mobile contact for their department and already knew about it before. Company sucks because its large and the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, so consumer low level government contract hand out small mobile plans Joe from customer service doesn’t even know Verizon has special government emergency service departments that deal with first responders. Verizon will have probably plugged the hole in that particular scenario. How many bets the fire department still didn’t bother getting the right contact for the second time.
The likelihood is in favour of Verizon just on pure business reasons. You don’t know all scenarios for customer service, so when something comes up that’s handled incorrectly you update the books. the fire department already failed to do their job once before, and have no reason to do it this time around because Verizon said they’d not throttle them on their shitty consumer plans. So why would you change your contact if you were the fire department?
(btw, they can still call Verizon for their CRT, the number is right on Verizons web page.)
Id be surprised if they even called the number the last time it happened to them.
