The Net Neutrality rules that were repealed wouldn't have stopped Verizon from doing this.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.
> related rules that have been removed would have allowed for recourse in this situation.
The related rules allow for formal complaints alleging that rules were broken. That's not recourse, as even under previous NN rules, data threshold throttling was perfectly fine. Recourse would be if they could complain and there was an actual rule broken that Verizon could be punished for.
...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.
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.
The basic concept of Net Neutrality is quite easy to understand - an "ISP" should be in the business of transporting opaque bits, period.
It's generally extremely lucrative for them to attempt to infer the purpose of a communication, and then attempt to put the customer over a barrel to extract value based on it [0]. Hence how this recent topic ties in - "Awfully big fire you're fighting there - it'd be a shame if it got even bigger because you didn't pay us more money".
[0] in fact this was the historic model of the phone and cable companies, which technology moved past - cf. "Ma Bell has you by the calls".
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
