Verizon firefighter data throttling

Verizon firefighter data throttling refers to an August 2018 episode in which Verizon slowed the data connection of a Santa Clara County, California, fire department command vehicle to a fraction of its normal speed while crews were deployed to an active wildfire, then told the department it could restore full speed only by moving to a more expensive plan. The throttling hit a mobile command unit the department was using to coordinate the response to the Mendocino Complex Fire, despite the unit running on a plan the department understood to be unlimited.^[1][2] The episode became public on August 20, 2018, when Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Fire Chief Anthony Bowden filed a sworn declaration describing it in the federal net-neutrality litigation before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.^[1][3] Verizon later said the incident was a customer-service mistake unrelated to net neutrality.^[4]

The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District operates OES Incident Support Unit 5262 (OES 5262), a command-and-control vehicle deployed to large wildfires to track and route personnel and equipment across the state.^[1] The unit relies on cloud-based software and shared spreadsheets to do near-real-time resource tracking, and connects to the internet through a mobile router fitted with a Verizon SIM card.^[1][2] The department subscribed to a government data plan that it understood to provide unlimited data, but whose speeds were reduced after a set high-speed allotment was used up in a billing cycle.^[4][2]

OES 5262 was deployed to the Mendocino Complex Fire, which the department's fire chief described in his sworn declaration as the largest fire in California's history.^[1] During the response, the department found that Verizon had throttled the unit's data connection so that, in the chief's words, rates had been reduced to 1/200, or less, than the previous speeds.^[1] The department's IT staff emailed Verizon asking that the throttling be lifted for public-safety reasons. According to the declaration, Verizon confirmed the throttling but said the department would have to switch to a costlier plan before the speeds would be restored.^[1] The full passage from Fire Chief Bowden's declaration reads:

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. These reduced speeds severely interfered with the OES 5262's ability to function effectively.

^[1]

The declaration stated that Verizon representatives indicated that County Fire would have to switch to a new data plan at more than twice the cost and would lift the throttling only after the department contacted its billing department and changed plans.^[1] Bowden wrote that while the throttling continued, crews were forced to use other agencies' connections and personal devices, and that Verizon lifted the restriction only after the department subscribed to the more expensive plan.^[1] The Guardian and CBS News reported the same chronology drawn from the court filing.^[2][3]

Court filings and reporting showed the Mendocino throttling was not the first time the unit's data had been slowed. The Los Angeles Times, citing the email records in the filing, reported that the department had also experienced throttling during earlier 2018 wildfire responses, and that a Verizon representative had suggested the department move to a higher-priced plan.^[5]

On August 22, 2018, Verizon acknowledged that it had throttled the department but denied the incident was about net neutrality, calling it a customer-support error. In a statement carried by Snopes and other outlets, the company said:

This situation has nothing to do with net neutrality or the current proceeding in court. We made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan ... In this situation, we should have lifted the speed restriction when our customer reached out to us. This was a customer support mistake.

^[4][6]

Two days later, on August 24, 2018, Verizon said it would lift data-speed restrictions for first responders. The company announced it was removing speed caps for first responders on the West Coast and in Hawaii, where crews were responding to flooding, and said it would lift restrictions for public-safety customers during future disasters.^[7][8]

Bowden's declaration was filed as an addendum to the brief for government petitioners in the consolidated case Mozilla Corp. v. FCC, the challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's 2017 repeal of its net-neutrality rules, heard by the D.C. Circuit.^[1][3] The county submitted the declaration to illustrate the consequences it attributed to the loss of the FCC's open-internet authority.^[3][4] Verizon and some commentators argued the throttling was a contractual data-cap matter rather than a net-neutrality violation.^[4]

At the federal level, Representative Anna Eshoo led a group of House members in asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether Verizon's marketing of an unlimited plan that was throttled during the emergency was an unfair or deceptive practice.^[9] In California, supporters of state net-neutrality legislation cited the incident while pressing for Senate Bill 822, the state's net-neutrality bill.^[10]

The story was first reported by Jon Brodkin of Ars Technica on August 21, 2018, under the headline Verizon throttled fire department's 'unlimited' data during Calif. wildfire, and was quickly picked up by The Verge, CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, and other outlets.^[4][3] The fact-checking site Snopes reviewed the court filing and rated the claim that Verizon throttled the fire department's data during the wildfire as true.^[4]

• Verizon
• Federal Communications Commission
• Federal Trade Commission