False Alarm: Verizon’s Fire Department Customer Service Fail Has Nothing to Do with Net Neutrality

Network neutrality activists are having a field day with the recent report that Verizon “throttled” the mobile data usage of the Santa Clara County Fire Prevention District (FPD). What really happened wasn’t a net neutrality issue: The FPD simply chose a data plan for their mobile command and control unit that was manifestly inappropriate for their needs. The FPD needed a lot of high-speed 4G mobile data — up to 300 GB/month when the device was deployed. (The typical consumer uses ~4 GB/month.) Verizon sold such pay-as-you-go plans to government users, but FPD opted for a much cheaper plan: up to 25 GB at 4G speeds, with slow speeds after that point. The 2015 Open Internet Order is quite explicit that data plans with speed restrictions don’t violate the throttling rule, so long as the company is clear about what users are getting.

Make no mistake: public safety communications are vital, and what happened involved mistakes by all parties involved. Verizon may or may not have been clear enough about the difference between the two plans, and using the word “unlimited” to refer to the kind of cheaper plan FPD chose might be confusing, since consumers do get as much data as they want to use — but not, once they reach their basic data allowance, at 4G speeds. But even if Verizon did mislead its customers (and it’s not clear they did), it wouldn’t really be a net neutrality issue requiring special Federal Communications Commission rules; it would be a standard consumer protection issue, the kind the Federal Trade Commission deals with all the time. Indeed, the FTC has already sued AT&T over how it marketed its own “unlimited” plans, and after the Ninth Circuit ruled that the lawsuit could proceed, the company settled.

[Berin Szóka is president of TechFreedom]