While battling the largest fire in California history, the Santa Clara Fire Department recently faced an unlikely hurdle: data throttling. The fire department's service provider, Verizon, slowed down cell service of command and control vehicles despite the fire department's unlimited plan and requests indicating an crisis. Verizon now claims the throttling was "a customer support mistake."
"In the midst of our response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, County Fire discovered the data connection for OES 5262 was being throttled by Verizon, and data rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the previous speeds," Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden writes. "These reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262's ability to function effectively. My Information Technology staff communicated directly with Verizon via email about the throttling, requesting it be immediately lifted for public safety purposes."
On June 29th, Fire Captain Justin Stockman contacted Verizon about the problem. A Verizon government accounts manager named Silas Buss responded by saying the Department had to upgrade from a $37.99 plan to a $39.99 plan "to get the data speeds restored on this device." After some back and forth, the Santa Clara Fire Department responded to that suggestion with "Please work with us. All we need is a plan that does not offer throttling or caps of any kind." In response, Buss suggested a plan that cost $99.99 for the first 20 GB and $8/GB after that. Eventually, Santa Clara agreed to this new plan. "While Verizon ultimately did lift the throttling, it was only after County Fire subscribed to a new, more expensive plan," Bowden writes.
Credits:
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a22799296/verizon-throttled-california-fire-departments-data-during-largest-fire-in-california-history/
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