The article never gives the details of the fire department rate plan, but my understanding is that they are not using the consumer plans that are available to most people. They have a special emergency responder rate plan, that really should be customized for emergency services.

How about having another way to communicate?
No doubt any additional cost will be passed on to the ratepayers.

'In the event of an emergency, the throttling was supposed to end, but Verizon's associate general counsel Jesus Roman told supervisors that the cap was never lifted. "Though we had a process to make exceptions ... for first responders, that process failed," Roman said. "We are contrite..."'

While it might not fix an arrogant corporate culture that allowed the Verizon telephone representative to wrongly insist on standard billing even when contacted by first responders during an emergency, if law enforcement made a practice of promptly *arresting* any rep who did that, for possible criminal charges (hampering emergency efforts in contravention of Verizon's promise), it might change behavior. That rep would be more than rhetorically "contrite."

How did they communicate before cell phones?

Net neutrality never applied to wireless data. It only applied to wired broadband previously. Wireless data bandwidth is limited since there is only so much spectrum available. If telcos can't throttle wireless high data users, everyone gets degraded service and/or higher prices.

Moreover, treating first responders the same as any other user is what net neutrality is. No one gets special treatment under net neutrality. If you want first responders to get special treatment (i.e. for their data to be prioritized ahead of others), then the network is no longer neutral.

Some advice to the county: if you want better service, upgrade your Verizon plan or switch to a provider that can deliver the services it promises. The current Verizon plan is not delivering the service level it promised. The county supervisors have made clear public safety is paramount.

It's clear Verizon only wants to deliver the service level the county wants if it gets paid more. Verizon will probably continue saying one thing to make itself look good in public, then continue to throttle in order to get paid more.

This whole scenario is going to play out again when the next emergency happens unless the county switches or pays up.

Net neutrality is one of those topics a large majority agree upon similar to No penalty for per-existing medical conditions.

Those are two things citizens in both parties agree on. The leaders who are in the pockets of the businesses that profit are working hard against this.
Vote them out.