Their complaint is that they were throttled 24/7, not just during congestion.
> But while such throttling is generally applied only during times of network congestion, the Santa Clara Fire Department says it was throttled at all times once the device in question went over a 25GB monthly threshold.
Before we allow ISP's to (ab)use fires, we should insist on provable congestion. If they refuse to self-regulate the internet traffic in the public interest, then the public interest should move to regulate internet traffic just like it regulates car traffic: priority to emergency services first.
In fact I am not against on the spot pricing schemes, as long as the demand and supply is provable.
I would consider such a system neutral enough. I wouldn't mind scheduling some datasets to download when network demand is low etc...
https://i.imgur.com/vXIXSlA.png Here I started a download, the rsrq drops. After finishing, the rsrq rises again. Note that the values are still "jittery" so a single value should not be taken as a clear indicator that a cell is congested.
https://i.imgur.com/opdFV9d.png Here is a graph for the last 7 days. One can see that during nighttime received quality rises, while it lowers during daytime.
Device in use is a Huawei B618, no external antennas.
In my experience, this is BS. I live in the sticks and when I hit my limit (which is 15GB in mifi...22GB is for phones), I get 600kpbs or less at all times, not just during "congestion". And I can't imagine how much congestion there is in my rural area. 600kbps is nearly non-usable.
If I sold you unlimited water but after 1 gallon you could only drink one drop per minute that doesn't make me a liar but it does make me an asshole for telling you it was unlimited.
The plans clearly say that for Mifi (i.e. hotspots), the limit is 15GB with 600kbps thereafter, not unlimited...
> Important Plan Information
> Unlimited Plans 4G LTE only. During times of congestion, your data may be temporarily slower than other traffic (only after 22GB/mo on Beyond Unlimited or 75 GB/mo on Above Unlimited).
Beyond that, anybody who is purchasing service for something like a fire department would know the difference between best effort service and a service with an SLA. Consumers will always be best served by having over-provisioning and best-effort service, because their needs are by nature bursty. Put another way, if you build a network that never throttles, you're leaving tons of capacity on the table that would be better used to offer faster burst downloads.
That problem is not best-effort service, it's a government entity that doesn't realize it needs a level service with real guarantees.