Katharine Trendacosta, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the situation undercuts the argument that net neutrality rules hindered emergency services by not allowing internet service providers to prioritize their data.
“They’ve often said if we’re allowed to throttle some and not others then we can give better service to emergency responders. We’re seeing here that’s not true,” she said. “It wasn’t net neutrality that prevented them from doing it. It’s clearly their own policies.”
Trendacosta said the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s experience “is an example of why actions like this are so dangerous and why we need to pay attention to how we’re getting our internet.”
Santa Clara County Fire Capt. Bill Murphy said officials felt compelled to join in the lawsuit as a means to ensure that reduced data speeds won’t impact the public’s access to information like evacuation routes and fire maps disseminated online during emergencies.
“If the public were to experience the same level of throttling that we experienced, their ability to access basic information we’re trying to get them would be significantly reduced,” he said.
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Question: How many people died because Verizon pulled this price gouging shit? How many homes were destroyed? How much property was damaged? Crunch those numbers, get them in writing, and tattoo it all over their faces.
And they had the nerve to say it was a “consumer support mistake”. If you’re really so incompetent that you “accidentally” throttle emergency services in the middle of a catastrophic event then you should be cut off and the internet made a utility.
A Middleground 