| Friend,
Cable-and-phone-company greed is out.of.control. If you need proof, look no further than what just happened to the Santa Clara Fire Department.
While that department was fighting the largest ongoing wildfire in California history, Verizon throttled its “unlimited” plan — slowing down its rapid broadband connection to dial-up speed.
According to Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden, the throttling hindered the operations of a fire department vehicle that’s “‘deployed to large incidents as a command and control resource’ and is used to ‘track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed.’”1
This resulted in a month of back and forth between the fire department and Verizon, and the fire department had nowhere to turn to resolve the problem. Why? Because when the FCC repealed its Net Neutrality rules, it didn’t just do away with a few rules about throttling and blocking — it gave away all of its broadband-oversight authority. This gave the fire department nowhere to go when people’s lives were literally on the line.
But when it comes to Net Neutrality and internet access, lives are always on the line. Without the open internet to illuminate police brutality, the family-separation crisis, White supremacy and other injustices, we’ll see more violence and atrocities in our communities.
This is why we’re fighting so hard to win back the Net Neutrality protections and return oversight to the FCC. It’s why we’re fighting to make internet access universal and affordable.
Free Press Action fights for these things every day but we cannot do it without your support.
Donate $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can give today to help us fight ISP greed and win back Net Neutrality.
Thanks for all that you do—
Candace, Matt, Lucia and the rest of the Free Press Action team
freepress.net
P.S. Verizon just made it harder for a California fire department to do its job. Without Title II Net Neutrality rules, this kind of behavior will become commonplace. Help Free Press Action fight back with a donation of $5 (or whatever you can give) today.
1. “Verizon Throttled Fire Department’s ‘Unlimited’ Data During California Wildfire,” Ars Technica, Aug. 21, 2018: https://act.freepress.net/go/25416?t=7&akid=10357%2E10296224%2ESO6GeQ |
