Enlarge / A West Covina firefighter pulls a hose away from a horse barn that burns as the Mendocino Complex Fire moves through the area on July 31, 2018 in Lakeport, California. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)

A fire department whose data was throttled by Verizon Wireless while it was fighting California’s largest-ever wildfire has rejected Verizon’s claim that the throttling was just a customer service error and “has nothing to do with net neutrality.” The throttling “has everything to do with net neutrality,” a Santa Clara County official said.

Verizon yesterday acknowledged that it shouldn’t have continued throttling Santa Clara County Fire Department’s “unlimited” data service while the department was battling the Mendocino Complex Fire. Verizon said the department had chosen an unlimited data plan that gets throttled to speeds of 200kbps or 600kbps after using 25GB a month but that Verizon failed to follow its policy of “remov[ing] data speed restrictions when contacted in emergency situations.”

“This was a customer support mistake” and not a net neutrality issue, Verizon said.