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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

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

So I guess they want to use net neutrality to force cellular carriers to offer enterprise-grade service at consumer prices. That's what everyone wants, of course, but it's rare to see someone actually say it.

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> "Our understanding from Eric Prosser, our former Information Technology Officer, was that he had received approval from Verizon that public safety should never be gated down because of our critical infrastructure need for these devices."

Perhaps the ITO was wrong, but it seems they had reason to believe they would get this level of service per an agreement with Verizon (rather than forcing them as you say), and it was Verizon who messed up their end of the deal.

Verizon and the other major carriers actually do offer a supposedly higher level of service under the mutistate WSCA contract that their Verizon Wireless account falls under. The Verizon rep they dealt with was definitely being a lame duck, he can change plans on the fly if he so pleased.

I made a comment about a relevant experience we had at my current employer.[1] In short, we switched from a multi-device plan with a shared 60 GB cap to a multi-device plan with an 'unlimited' data cap, our IT department was genuinely surprised when devices were throttling after 22 GB per device. Also, Verizon wanted so much money to increase a device's cap, it was cheaper to purchase additional hotspots, pay to add them to the plan, and cannibalize the SIMs when current devices start throttling.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17814698

Safety-of-life applications are not appropriate areas for throttling. That should have been in the state's contract with Verizon from day one, but it probably wasn't seen as necessary before the recent FCC ruling.

Interesting moderation in this thread, concurrent with the sudden appearance of what looks like a brigade of counterfactual Verizon defenders. Hopefully the HN staff is keeping an eye on the IP logs.

If you need an SLA, you pay $$$ for service with an SLA. This is basic IT competency.

Which is what Verizon promised, then went back on because "unlimited really means*"

There is context to that promise of "unlimited". The government bought one cheap consumer-oriented cellular internet plan for their mission critical emergency communications. There is a bit of mismatch on the intended purpose of the offer. I'm sure you'll even find a disclaimer of liability and disclaimer of suitability/warranty in the contract. The government f'ed up, no way around it.

And I'd wager heavily that the government employees/contractors had ample budget to read the contract.

"cheap," "consumer-oriented"

Two terms that don't appear in any Verizon contract, commercial or otherwise.

Nope, this isn't a plan offered to consumers, both AT&T and Verizon actually offer the $37.99 unlimited data device plan to any government organization or charity in a state that participates in the Western State Contracting Alliance.

Part of what WSCA contracts for is better service, which was obviously not provided here. The Verizon Rep did jack when confronted with a critical issue, he could have easily done either of the plan changes suggested and applied a credit for the difference. But, on Verizon only their employees are allowed to work on WSCA contracted accounts, ensuring they perpetually get the worst customer support. No other carrier does this!

> There is context to that promise of "unlimited".

There's no context to any such promise that would make it not fraudulent, given how they implemented it.

It seems to me like the government could put Verizon on the "unlimited" wildfire protection plan. Which is to say that their office buildings with human employees in them get protected along with their regular taxes, but each backhaul fiber that doesn't get cut through while creating firebreaks, and each mobile comms tower that doesn't get all of its antennas burnt off, costs them extra.

Or they can have unlimited capital assets deployed in the field protected, but after the first few million dollars worth are saved, the fire response gets throttled back so that the firefighters move more slowly than the fire.

The kicker is that Verizon would just smile and put a "California wildfire protection fee cost recovery" line item on everybody's bill. Ernestine is the worst. Verizon won't play nice with anyone until Ma Bell gets broken up yet again.

Yeah, interestingly enough, one "richest man in history" was the guy who ran a fire service and "extorted" fire victims for money at the last second when they had an actual fire; it would almost look like turnabout if the FD did that to Verizon here. "Oh, yeah, see, you weren't on the full-service fire plan; that's extra. See, our charter says we can withhold service if we judge there to be too much risk in fighting the fire, and gosh darnit, it sure seems risky today..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus#Rise_t...

Verizon already pays for these services through taxes, and the government is not liable for damage to Verizon's property resulting from a wildfire, so why would extra money change hands upon such damage?

Your comment is glib and cute, but it really is a baseless fantasy when confronted with facts.

Well, so too does the FD. But they didn't get it. Even Verizon's language says, "During times of congestion, your traffic may be slowed (but only after 22GB in a month)".

And yet their traffic was slowed to 30kbps (which, lets face it, isn't slowed, but effectively halted), permanently. Unless Verizon wants to claim that their best of breed, "least congested" network (their words) was congested at 2am, 4am, etc...

There's nuance in throlling and prioritization. All traffic must be prioritized somehow or it's not going to work well for anyone. Perhaps WPS-enabled lines on grandfathered unlimited plans should be getting the lions-share of bandwidth over retail users watching cat videos.

Interesting. I wonder how this interacts with data and voice lines on WPS... given priority but not?

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