Wireless carriers are shamelessly lobbying against new bill banning throttling during...

[onetheycallEric]

Big quote: "It's basically bogus," said Ernesto Falcon, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The legislation is straightforward in that they just can't throttle public safety like they did in Santa Clara where they took their 50 Mbps down/10 Mbps up connection and brought it down to kilobits speed where it was useless to them."

CTIA, the wireless industry's largest lobbying group, is opposing a bill being proposed in California that would ban the throttling of data for firefighters and other first responders during a state of emergency.

Verizon found itself at the center of national controversy and recoil after throttling firefighters' data in California, while the state was battling one of its biggest wildfires to date. Verizon's throttling would later serve as a catalyst for both arguing against reversing the FCC's controversial rollback of net neutrality, and other state sponsored bills banning data throttling during emergencies.

It would seem CTIA, who represents wireless carriers such as Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, "respectfully opposes" the language of the bill. California bill AB-1699, introduced by Assembly member Marc Levine, states that it shall "prohibit a mobile internet service provider from impairing or degrading the lawful internet traffic of its public safety customer accounts, subject to reasonable network management, during a state of emergency."

Grateful for the @CalChiefs_CFCA's support of my #ab1699 to prevent data throttling of first responders during an emergency. When seconds count, our first responders need every tool available to keep our communities safe. pic.twitter.com/pYUuVcauXi

--- Assemblymember Marc Levine (@AsmMarcLevine) April 25, 2019

In a letter, the CTIA wrote that it believes the bill's language is vague and ambiguous. The lobbying group also took issue with who could declare a state of emergency, saying such a trigger should be limited to the Governor or President, rather than local governments. The CTIA warned that the bill could cause "serious unintended consequences" or "invite needless litigation," the latter of which sounds like a subtle threat to sue the State of California should the bill go unamended.

Despite opposition, the bill has advanced with a 12-0 vote and will head towards an April 30 hearing with the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee. "CTIA did oppose the bill but committed to work with Assembly Member Levine to address their concerns," said Terry Schanz, Levine's chief of staff in a statement to Ars Technica. "We are confident that we will be able to reach an agreement between first responders and wireless data providers to ensure that first responders have every tool available to them necessary to keep the public safe during an emergency."

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/79844-wireless-carriers-shamelessly-lobbying-against-new-bill-banning.html

 

[Cycloid Torus]

CTIA - are they not merely detailing their objections to specific language and proposing alternative language? “We are confident that we will be able to reach an agreement between first responders and wireless data providers" sounds like the HEADLINE overstates the case.

 

[ckm88]

Well the government/Congress should step in and veto this. lel.

 

[wiyosaya]

CITA respectfully opposes? SMH. I really do not get how any entity can respectfully oppose a bill like this.

I hope it passes, they take CA to court on this, and the lose miserably.

 

[seeprime]

CTIA - are they not merely detailing their objections to specific language and proposing alternative language? “We are confident that we will be able to reach an agreement between first responders and wireless data providers" sounds like the HEADLINE overstates the case.

Not exactly. They simply don't want a serious local emergency to be a reason for them to allow full speeds to emergency workers.. It comes across as an absurd greedy move presented in a manner to make it look like they want it "clarified". When a disaster strikes it can take hours, or even days, to have a governor or the US President declare it an emergency. The arrogance is un-subtle. "Your local emergency needs to be a much bigger one for us to want to help you." What a bunch of a-holes. Let sh*t happen, and then get worse, because they don't want to implement new control systems that can simplify the jobs of emergency workers by rapidly, even automatically, opening up their communications to the needed levels. This is pathetic.

 

[trparky]

As much as this is going to be unfavorable I'd have to agree with the carriers. During a local emergency things should be throttled so as to allow for the people who really need network access (ie. first responders) have priority access to the network to facilitate proper communications. We don't need people clogging up the airwaves with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram when there's a real need to communicate.

If you really need to communicate during an emergency and you're not a first responder, send a text. Remember those? 160 characters of just plain old text and keep it short like... "Hello, I'm safe. I'll call when I get a chance."

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are NOT important when you have a local emergency. First responders need to have priority access since they're the ones putting their lives on the line to help those who need it.

Now as far as throttling the first responders, no... that shouldn't be the case at all. If anything those are the people who need first and priority access to the network and have the bandwidth to be able to do their jobs.

 

[wiyosaya]

As much as this is going to be unfavorable I'd have to agree with the carriers. During a local emergency things should be throttled so as to allow for the people who really need network access (ie. first responders) have priority access to the network to facilitate proper communications. We don't need people clogging up the airwaves with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram when there's a real need to communicate.

If you really need to communicate during an emergency and you're not a first responder, send a text. Remember those? 160 characters of just plain old text and keep it short like... "Hello, I'm safe. I'll call when I get a chance."

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are NOT important when you have a local emergency. First responders need to have priority access since they're the ones putting their lives on the line to help those who need it.

Now as far as throttling the first responders, no... that shouldn't be the case at all. If anything those are the people who need first and priority access to the network and have the bandwidth to be able to do their jobs.

If you read the article again, the bill is about not being able to throttle first responders - not everyone else.

 

[gusticles41]

The CTIA warned that the bill could cause "serious unintended consequences" or "invite needless litigation

Throttling caused serious and unintended consequences. Eff right off with that.

 

[TheBigT42]

This is such BS

"Verizon found itself at the center of national controversy and recoil after throttling firefighters' data in California,"

If Public Safety organizations actually subscribe to the correct service plan for public safety from Verizon they won't get throttled. That is what happened if California...they were on a business plan not a plan for public safety.

If you don't get on the correct plan there is no way for Verizon or any other carrier to know who to throttle and who not to.

 

[wiyosaya]

This is such BS

"Verizon found itself at the center of national controversy and recoil after throttling firefighters' data in California,"

If Public Safety organizations actually subscribe to the correct service plan for public safety from Verizon they won't get throttled. That is what happened if California...they were on a business plan not a plan for public safety.

If you don't get on the correct plan there is no way for Verizon or any other carrier to know who to throttle and who not to.

IMO, Verzion should ask questions up front to ensure that their subscribers get the right plan.

 

[mbrowne5061]

This is such BS

"Verizon found itself at the center of national controversy and recoil after throttling firefighters' data in California,"

If Public Safety organizations actually subscribe to the correct service plan for public safety from Verizon they won't get throttled. That is what happened if California...they were on a business plan not a plan for public safety.

If you don't get on the correct plan there is no way for Verizon or any other carrier to know who to throttle and who not to.

Never mind that the only real advantage to those plans are 'we promise we probably will not throttle you' and a much higher price tag.

The air waves Verizon and every other carrier uses are public property, to which they have been granted a license to use. If they won't create reasonable plans for publicly-funded first-responders, then they should have expected to see legislation come down the pipeline.

Regulate yourselves or expect the government to do it for you.

 

[trparky]

If you read the article again, the bill is about not being able to throttle first responders - not everyone else.

But someone is going to come along and cry Net Neutrality. Why? Because.... Reasons.

 

[wiyosaya]

Regulate yourselves or expect the government to do it for you.

Exactly.

But someone is going to come along and cry Net Neutrality. Why? Because.... Reasons.

I doubt that. But we will see.

 

[Uncle Al]

If the FCC would grow a set they might actually understand the benefits of being "pro-private citizen" and tell all these over bloated telco's to blow 'em!

 

[hwertz]

If you don't get on the correct plan there is no way for Verizon or any other carrier to know who to throttle and who not to.

Exactly.

Never mind that the only real advantage to those plans are 'we promise we probably will not throttle you' and a much higher price tag.

Yes. They wanted to save the money of not paying for priority access, but still have priority access. Just like with everyone else saving on the ol' phone bill, they hoped they would not hit the throttle cap, but went over and did.

The air waves Verizon and every other carrier uses are public property, to which they have been granted a license to use. If they won't create reasonable plans for publicly-funded first-responders, then they should have expected to see legislation come down the pipeline.

They have reasonable plans, and this department chose not to use them. Or at least buy one line on the high-priced plan for what (from the description in the article) was some kind of communications hub; this also brings up the question, if they have a communications hub why put it on a line with a 25GB throttle cap data limit instead of at home base on a fat wired connection?

Regulate yourselves or expect the government to do it for you.

I'm a libertarian and find this is the exact opposite of what a gov't should do. I mean, they do but they shouldn't.

All that said... I think I clearly see CTIA's objection here, as well as the first responders. Having responders be throttled during an emergency is definitely not ideal. VZW really should have worked something out with them to get their data back up to speed, rather than trying to strongarm them into a bigger plan (which presumably they don't normally need.) Having the cell cos charge first responders a huge surcharge for priority access (like they would do for businesses ordering this type of service) is something I think they should cut out.

BUT, this bill as written is really ripe for abuse; first responders are after all also called emergency responders, they can plausbily claim EVERYTHING they respond to is an emergency. At that point, why would they EVER buy more than the bare minimum 500MB or 1GB plan from any provider if they could then go say "Yeah, but you're not allowed to throttle when we go over."

Worse yet, the bill is ripe for abuse in the other direction; there is "reasonable network management" still allowed but not defined. So, they could pass this bill, and still have responders who are on "the wrong plan" have their speeds reduced to almost nothing, just due to deprioritization (which is currently considered to be reasonable network management) rather than throttling.

It seems to me there are two better solutions here; 1) figure out some way (without forcing via gov't regulation..) to get cell cos to reduce whatever surcharge they have for emergency services priority access. This may already happen due to PR honestly. 2) They can suck it up and wait for FirstNet to be built out (by AT&T). I'm no AT&T fan, but this is being built to some minimum standard; T-Mo has much better coverage than the past due to 600mhz buildout; no comment on Sprint. It's a competitive market, it may be time for VZW to lose a few contracts.