Telecoms fight a law that would make throttling of emergency responders illegal

One of the main issues with a deregulated internet, broadband, and wireless communications industry is that there are no checks on what they can and cannot do to consumers. That issue becomes dangerous when you consider that not only are our telecommunications systems essential to citizens trying to reach out to one another and get important information, but our emergency services depend on those services to work as advertised. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Verizon, by successfully getting their former lawyer and now Trump FCC chairman Ajit Pai to roll back net neutrality protections, are able to use their monopolistic powers to gouge customers and online services. One of the main forms that this takes is “throttling.”

Throttling is the term for when wireless providers squeeze down the speeds with which you can access the internet and other wireless communications. It is a practice that allows companies like Verizon and AT&T to offer up “unlimited data” plans, while still making you pay more for different kinds of “unlimited” data.

One of the great mysteries* in the rollback of the popular net neutrality protections was that telecommunications companies had already been able to (mostly) avoid censure for throttling practices. Of course, the problem with big corporations like the ones that make up our broadband and wireless industries is that they really only care about their bottom line and ever-increasing stock prices. Without real competition or oversight, big telecommunications companies will continue to squeeze the tap.

Proof of how sociopathic the culture of big business can be was seen during this past year’s wildfires in California. Verizon throttled Santa Clara County fire department services in the middle of their emergency response, telling the chief he needed to buy a more expensive package. This throttling went on for weeks, and Verizon initially tried to say it hadn’t actually happened.

Verizon quickly said that this was simply a mistake—a bad mistake, but a mistake none the less. But the situation highlighted that when a company’s design and culture is based predominantly around profit and sales, these things happen and they aren’t mistakes: they are results. Verizon very quickly mounted a campaign that included ads with firefighters in it and bot-driven online messaging, but the damage was done. People across the nation, politicians included, realized that at the very least, maybe these big companies could be forced to at least not throttle our emergency services?

This led to Democratic Assemblyman Marc Levine submitting Assembly Bill 1699 in January:

from Daily Kos http://bit.ly/2ILhGhD