Starting in the second half of 2013, Netflix speeds on several major Internet service providers began to sink drastically as the ISPs allowed Netflix downstream traffic to bottleneck, resulting in slow, fitful delivery to consumers who had paid Netflix for the service and the ISPs for broadband access. Earlier this year, Comcast speeds turned up out of their nosedive when the company made a profitable deal with Netflix, but what about everyone else? [More]
net neutrality
Verizon: Everything Is Great, Let’s Not Mess It Up By Fixing Net Neutrality
By 3.27.14
Ah, Verizon, those well-known lovers of net neutrality. They love it so much that they sued the FCC to get net neutrality tossed out — a move that succeeded earlier this year. And now, Verizon’s showing their deep and abiding fondness for internet openness by telling the FCC just how much we don’t need to protect it at all. [More]
AT&T Promises: Kill Net Neutrality And You’ll Pay Less For Internet
By 3.24.14
Most of the discussion about net neutrality and paid peering has been about who shoulders the financial burden for increased broadband use — the Internet Service Providers who need to invest in hardware and manpower to meet demand, or the companies like Netflix, Google, and Amazon whose content is so in-demand that it requires extra support from the ISPs? In the end, it doesn’t really matter since it’s the consumer who ultimately foots the bill, but AT&T is making its argument for weak net neutrality by saying it will lead to lower rates for subscribers. [More]
Apple, Comcast Chatting About Streaming TV Service That Would Make End-Run Around Net Neutrality
By 3.24.14
One of the biggest roadblocks for non-cable TV companies looking to get into the business of offering live TV service over the Internet is that these cable companies often control that “last mile” of Internet service to customers’ homes. Since the FCC’s net neutrality rules have been gutted — and ISPs now realizing they can charge tolls to content providers even if those rules were in place — the end-user might just get a TV screen full of blocky, stuttering visuals and intermittent audio. Apple is reportedly chatting with Comcast about a set-top box that would get around this concern by treating Apple’s stream differently than regular Internet traffic. [More]
Not A Joke: Comcast Says No One Is More Dedicated To Net Neutrality Than It Is
By 3.20.14
A month ago, Comcast and Netflix seemed to be buddy-buddy when the streaming video service agreed to pay a price to end Comcast’s passive-aggressive efforts to make sure its customers had cruddy access to Netflix. Then today, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings had a not-so-nice word or two about his new paid-peering partner. [More]
Netflix Agrees To Pay Comcast To End Slowdown
By 2.23.14
For the last several months, Comcast Internet customers have complained about a drop in quality of the Netflix streams being delivered to their homes, and Netflix’s own data showed a massive decline in connection speeds starting in October. But today, the two companies announced they have reached a “mutually beneficial” agreement that will hopefully turn that trend around. [More]
Why Even A Net Neutrality Rewrite Wouldn’t Alleviate Slow Netflix Service
By 2.19.14
While today’s announcement from FCC Chair Tom Wheeler that the commission would take another stab at writing net neutrality rules — thus preventing ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable from blocking or throttling access to certain sites for its customers — the re-establishment of the Open Internet guidelines still wouldn’t do much to end some of the current Netflix-related hiccups customers are seeing. [More]
FCC Chair Announces Vague Plan To Try To Fix Net Neutrality
By 2.19.14
Last month, a federal appeals court struck down the core components of the FCC’s net neutrality rules, effectively opening the door for Internet service providers to block, throttle, or charge exorbitant fees to bandwidth-heavy content companies (Netflix, we’re all looking at you). The court had ruled that the FCC had never properly classified ISPs in a way that would allow the neutrality rules to apply. Today, FCC Chair Tom Wheeler unveiled a general outline for his plan to get those guidelines back in place. [More]
White House Wants FCC To Support Net Neutrality, Won’t Order It To Reclassify Broadband ISPs
By 2.18.14
The White House today issued a response to a petition asking the Obama administration to intervene with the FCC to preserve net neutrality. Although the response “reaffirms” and “strongly supports” the administration’s commitment to net neutrality, that support does not extend to telling the FCC what to do. [More]
Congressional Democrats Propose Legislation To Preserve Net Neutrality
By 2.3.14
Net neutrality may be dead since a court overturned it in January, but legislators are trying to resurrect it as quickly as possible. [More]
Former FCC Commissioner: FCC Needs To Reclassify Broadband ISPs, Save Net Neutrality
By 1.27.14
The regulation guaranteeing net neutrality–the rule that an internet service provider can’t give preferential treatment to one kind of content over another–went belly up earlier this month when an appeals court struck it down. [More]
Netflix Would Ask Consumers To Protest If ISPs Try Blocking Or Throttling Service
By 1.23.14
The upshot of last week’s federal appeals court ruling that tossed out the core of the FCC’s net neutrality rule is that Internet Service Providers can now impede access to competing or data-hogging websites by downgrading or blocking these content providers. Netflix, the country’s single largest devourer of bandwidth, had been relatively quiet on this ruling, until yesterday, when it shared its view of the future of net neutrality with investors. [More]
No Big Surprise: TV Watchers Fleeing Premium Channels For Streaming
By 1.20.14
With more and more options in premium television popping up, consumer subscription habits are evolving. So it comes as no surprise that subscription video-on-demand services are on the rise, while premium TV channel subscriptions have declined. [More]
Is Netflix A Loser Or Winner With End Of Net Neutrality?
By 1.15.14
Yesterday’s ruling by a federal appeals court gives Internet service providers the ability to charge premium rates or additional fees to whichever content providers the ISPs want. Considering that Netflix is the single largest user of bandwidth in the U.S., many observers predict this ruling is bad news for the streaming video service, but some contend that Netflix may come out a winner in the long run. [More]
The Net Neutrality Rule Is Dead. So How Can The FCC Fix Net Neutrality?
By 1.14.14
This morning, a federal appellate court vacated FCC rules guaranteeing net neutrality, effectively giving Internet service providers the right to throttle data speeds and demand premium rates from content providers. So your ISP has a service that competes with Netflix? It can (and probably will) get preferred treatment. Companies like Netflix that eat up bandwidth? They had better be prepared to pay the piper. It would essentially mean the end of the Internet was we know it, but is it a done deal? [More]
Appeals Court Strikes Down Net Neutrality Rules
By 1.14.14
A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., today released a ruling that strikes down key provisions of the FCC’s net neutrality rule. [More]
Law Would Make It Illegal To For ISPs To Throttle Streaming Video
By 11.13.13
For years, there have been accusations of Internet service providers deliberately slowing down or degrading the quality of data from streaming video services. Recently, a company that provides a good deal of bandwidth to Netflix accused Verizon of allowing traffic to streaming video traffic to get snarled in bottlenecks. Newly introduced legislation would outlaw the practice of throttling and degrading video content. [More]
