Verizon Made an Enemy Tonight
Colin Nederkoorn (via Landon Fuller):
This Netflix video streams at 375 kbps (or 0.375 mbps – 0.5% of the speed I pay for) at the fastest. I was shocked. Then I decided to try connecting to a VPN service to compare.
[…]
It seems absurd to me that adding another hop via a VPN actually improves streaming speed.
Clearly it’s not Netflix that doesn’t have the capacity. It seems that Verizon are deliberately dragging their feet and failing to provide service that people have paid for.
3 Comments RSS · Twitter
see http://blog.level3.com/global-connectivity/verizons-accidental-mea-culpa/
While I agree Verizon is the problem I will also point out that he is not paying for 75mbps he is paying for bandwidth up to 75mbps or best effort given network conditions....
If Verizon advertises 75 mbps service and the customer is paying for that tier of service to stream or view content from the provider of the customer's choice, then that speed needs to be the average peak speed its customers receive as a group. That allows for individual customers to experience slower speeds based on network conditions, yes, but the average peak speed should still meet or exceed the advertised speed. Otherwise, the advertised speed is inaccurate.
"If Verizon advertises 75 mbps service and the customer is paying for that tier of service to stream or view content from the provider of the customer's choice, then that speed needs to be the average peak speed its customers receive as a group."
But, of course, part of the attraction with Verizon is that you have a dedicated fibre connection to the head office, and aren't subjected to the 'group rationing' of the coax local loop. One of the real attractions of FTTH is that you don't get that speed as an average peak speed. You actually consistently get that speed all the time, as my speed tests prove, just as long as you're not trying to connect to a server that Verizon chooses to overwhelmingly throttle at their entry point.
"Otherwise, the advertised speed is inaccurate."
No. Obviously not. The FIOS speed you pay for is the internal speed within the FIOS network, from the 'first mile' to the 'last mile'. And FIOS delivers the speed you pay for within the FIOS network. If they choose to overwhelmingly throttle the speed at the 'first mile' from a wide variety of sources, why should you, as a customer, care about such minutiae as that?
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"While I agree Verizon is the problem I will also point out that he is not paying for 75mbps he is paying for bandwidth up to 75mbps or best effort given network conditions...."
Exactly. Finally someone who gets it. "Up to 75mbps" and "0.375 mbps" are the same thing! Literally!
The only problem with your statement is the "or best effort given network conditions" caveat. That's laughable in this particular situation.
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And as always, because Netflix is such a massive amount of download traffic, folks tend to (understandably) focus on only that. But FIOS is overwhelmingly throttling at the 'first mile' point a wide variety of internet traffic beyond just Netflix...
