Verizon says throttling firefighters wasn’t about net neutrality — was it?

Verizon slowing California firefighters’ data speeds during a wildfire crisis, but was quick to say, “This situation has nothing to do with net neutrality or the current proceeding in court.” Verizon was throttling “unlimited” customers in less extreme circumstances who hit certain data thresholds well before the Federal Communications Commission repealed net neutrality rules in 2017. But under the rules adopted in 2015, customers had a path to complain to the FCC when they believed throttling was unfair. In this case, that route was largely re-directed to the FTC, a structure that’s been criticized as insufficient. “If the net neutrality rules were still in place,” said Gigi Sohn, who worked on the net neutrality rules under the previous FCC chairman, “trust me, I don’t think there would’ve been a monthlong conversation about this.”