What Happened to the Old Telephone Company?

The story about Verizon Wireless closing down data access to the California Firefighters as noted in Ars Technica is an example of what happens when a monopoly is no longer considered a monopoly. It also seems in my opinion to be the result of a management team who seem not to be American, mostly Europeans, and have no idea as to the long telecom culture of pitching in during tragedies. Instead they seem to be driven by wringing out ever nickel.

As the article notes:

This is not the first time we have had this issue. In December of 2017 while deployed to the Prado Mobilization Center supporting a series of large wildfires we had the same device with the same sim card also throttled. I was able to work through Eric Prosser at the time to have service to the device restored and Eric communicated that Verizon had properly re-categorized the device as truly "unlimited". In the email below Verizon is stating that they can restore the device for an extra $2/month. I obviously lack the authority to make such an approval. If we could get Verizon [to get] that approval I would appreciate it.

In the old days when I was there we immediately turned to in any tragedy, adding capacity and even sending personnel and equipment. It appears that the new management seem to think they can totally disregard their customers even in times of need.

If this happens to firefighters in California just imagine what the plain old customer has to deal with. There unfortunately is no remedy available. It is a Pity, there was once a culture of support, now the culture is one of draining the last ounce of blood!