Verizon Wants You to Forget it Throttled Firefighters’ Phone Data

During the Super Bowl Verizon ran an ad honoring first responders and set up a website honoring them. It clearly doesn’t want you to remember when it throttled the cellular data of firefighters during the California wildfires.

[Verizon Throttles California Firefighter Bandwidth During Emergency, Demands More Money, Later Calls It ‘A Mistake’]

All Our Thanks Money

The website—called AllOurThanks.com—includes interviews with NFL athletes explaining how they were helped by first responders during emergencies. Verizon says it’s working with the Gary Sinise Foundation and send US$1 for every mention of the campaign on social media.

But no PR campaign can erase the carrier’s extortion. During the California wildfires, firefighters found that their Verizon data had been significantly slowed down, right when they needed it the most. Verizon claimed it “made a mistake in how we communicated with our customer about the terms of its plan.”

Santa Clara County went to court in support of net neutrality, questioning why carriers should be able to slow speeds in emergencies, and whether the FCC accounted for that possibility.

[Verizon is Blocking Activations of Older iPhones]