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:
Under existing law, the Public Utilities Commission has regulatory authority over public utilities, including telephone corporations. Existing law requires the commission, in consultation with the Office of Emergency Services, to identify the need for telecommunications service systems not on customers’ premises to have backup electricity to enable telecommunications networks to function, and to enable customers to contact a public safety answering point operator during an electrical outage, to determine performance criteria for backup systems, and to determine whether specified best practices for backup systems have been implemented by telecommunications service providers operating in California.
Existing law prohibits a mobile internet service provider from engaging in specified actions concerning the treatment of internet traffic, including, among other things, blocking lawful content, applications, services, or nonharmful devices, and impairing or degrading lawful internet traffic on the basis of internet content, application, or service, or use of a nonharmful device, subject to reasonable network management.
This bill would 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. [emphasis added]
According to
State Scoop, this is just far too much to ask of the telecommunications industry, whose lobbying group CTIA is fighting the proposal on the grounds that it’s too vague. The group reportedly sent
this letter to the
California Assembly’s Communications and Conveyance Committee, arguing that terms like the ones bolded above were “ambiguous and may result in serious unintended consequences, like needless litigation.” Sounds sort of like a threat, doesn’t it?
CTIA argues that allowing local municipalities to declare emergencies that would require telecommunications companies to come through on their promises to assist local agencies would be too confusing for ISPs. This is an insane thing to say.
*Not a mystery, FCC chair Ajit Pai is a shill.