In short: Verizon has been throttling the unlimited plan of a family that had just been devastated by Hurricane Florence, which hit the east coast in the past few days. The user posted on Reddit under the name “AbeFroman21” and stated that he is from Eastern North Carolina, and was hit hard by the hurricane. He and his family does not have any power, and thus no internet. And they have been using their phones to check their email and check Facebook for updates from the community. But he saw that both he and his wife were unable to refresh their Email inbox or check Facebook. Thinking it was some sort of data outage, they went to a larger town and called Verizon. Come to find out, they have been throttled. But Verizon did say that if they upgraded to a higher-tier plan, they could get unthrottled.
Background:Verizon, among other carriers, have been offering free data, calls and texts to those affected by Hurricane Florence. But apparently, that is not stopping Verizon from throttling those users in that area. Which is unfortunate, and this actually happened with the recent wildfires in California. Where Verizon throttled the data on a firefighters’ account, who was out there battling the wildfires. Verizon apologized and created a data plan that will never be throttled, and was specifically for first responders. But here we are again with Verizon throttling a users’ data plan, in the midst of a natural disaster.
Impact: Throttling users’ data that are in the affected area of Hurricane Florence is not the kind of press that Verizon wants (or needs, after the wildfires throttling story). It also really affects those in that affected area. As of right now, there are around 570,000 people that are still without power in North and South Carolina. Which also means there’s no internet at their home, and they need to rely on their wireless carriers’ 4G LTE network to check things and stay up-to-date with what’s going. But when you’re throttled, that makes it impossible.