
Pissed Off by Verizon, Firefighters Join the Fight to Restore Net Neutrality - petethomas
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjkmbn/verizon-firefighters-join-fight-restore-net-neutrality
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merpnderp
The Net Neutrality rules that were repealed wouldn't have stopped Verizon from
doing this. The biggest problem with NN is that hardly anyone even understands
the issue.

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thomastjeffery
The article glossed over details while mentioning that related rules that have
been removed would have allowed for recourse in this situation.

The point the article is trying to make is that this stems from a shift in
policy that clearly favors Verizon.

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thaumasiotes
...no? The article is quite detailed about what recourse it thinks should have
been available, but wasn't:

> former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn stated the FCC’s elimination of net neutrality
> rules also eliminated the first responders’ ability to complain to the FCC.
> If the rules had still been intact, the department could have complained
> that Verizon was unreasonably interfering with its ability to use broadband
> under the “general conduct rule,” Sohn noted.

This is not a compelling argument. If there's one problem these guys aren't
suffering from, it's an inability to complain about what happened.

~~~
dragonwriter
They are referring to a basis for formal complaint of rulebreaking which is
adjudicatable in a venue with the power to issue compulsory rulings.

Yeah, they can complain now, but that's under a radically different sense of
“complain”; an argument based on conflating the two embodies the fallacy of
equivocation.

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salawat
If there's one thing I've learned about non-technical people, and law, it's
that they know what they want, and they know when they are getting the short
end of the stick.

You can sit here and say Net Neutrality has nothing to do with this, but to
the layman, there is nothing neutral about throttling traffic, especially
during an emergency.

It doesn't matter if by the letter of the law before this type of behavior
would have been allowed. They see Net Neutrality rolled back, then an ISP
holding firefighters over a barrel...WHILE FIGHTING a major fire.

You DO NOT obstruct an emergency service over sixty dollars a month. You
especially don't do it while the State is on fire. Verizon brought this on
itself. "Customer Service" failure or not. This represents a major loss of
public faith in A) the market to put the safety of it's host civilization
first,and B) the willingness and or ability of the governmental agency
intended to prevent this sort of malfeasance from happening.

Don't get me wrong. I DO NOT like heavy handed government interference
anywhere it isn't absolutely needed.

I love a free market...With the caveat that the actors conduct themselves in a
responsible, ethical, and honorable manner, and with due deference to
providing the necessary aid to the area in which they operate in terms of
protecting the ability of that area to even maintain an ability to safely host
civilization. In case anyone out there is wondering, throttling firefighters
isn't that.

And if anyone else wonders where I draw the line for due deference: typically
at the division between "this can completely render the area uninhabitable to
humans" as opposed to "there are scary people here". (I.e. Fire, rescue, and
Medical gets due deference. Law Enforcement can take a number and get in line
due to the specific abuse potential).

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Lazare
This is the second time I've seen an article about this, and I _still_ can't
understand why people think this is related to net neutrality.

The closest anyone seems to have got is that under some unrelated rules that
were changed at the same time as net neutrality was repealed, it's now harder
for the firefighters to complain to the FCC that Verizon is breaking some
_entirely different_ unrelated rule. Except 1) no one seems to think Verizon
is actually breaking that rule, and 2) even if they were, nothing here is
related to net neutrality.

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dstroot
Net throttling is unrelated to net neutrality. Ironically, revoking net
neutrality also potentially helps firefighters. If identifiable, their traffic
could be prioritized over yours.

In reality prioritizing first responder traffic over my YouTube cat video will
prove impossible. What will happen is the ISP will insert cat videos in to
first responder traffic. Therefore, net neutrality is the best we could ever
hope for. I’ve called my senator and my representative. I hope you have too.

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solotronics
Even as a network engineer who worked for ISPs for years I have always been on
the side of anyone against the big ISP. There is a big difference between SLA
(service level agreement) between enterprise and consumer internet circuits.
The unfortunate part here is that with proper advice they could have gotten a
dedicated fiber circuit with a SLA and unlimited bandwidth.

Municipal governments should band together and make their own fiber networks.

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taurath
For the low low price of 100% of their vehicle fleet maintenance costs, being
a government institution. Probably saved hundreds of thousands of dollars
using consumer lines

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FireBeyond
They weren't using consumer lines - they had a business account, specifically
the Western States Regional Government Agreement with Verizon.

