By: Mike Montgomery
Netflix hasn’t looked this bad since the whole Qwikster fiasco.
The streaming video company recently admitted that is has been throttling data speeds for customers watching Netflix on Verizon and AT&T-powered devices. If you’re one of those unlucky Netflix subscribers, like me, and were wondering why your video stream wasn’t as glossy and smooth as it should have been, now you know the reason.
Apparently, this has been going on for five years. So while Netflix was not only lobbying the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and demanding that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) be prohibited from a litany of items that most everyone agrees are bad for the digital era, the streaming giant alleged that certain ISPs (such as Verizon) were throttling Netflix’s video traffic to their customers. The FCC relied on that misrepresentation as a basis for their regulatory intervention.
Netflix is defending itself by saying that it wasn’t trying to hurt customers. In fact, it was trying to help them because video uses a lot of data so they were just trying to save customers from the expense of exceeding their data limits. But secretively slowing traffic on its own network to a large base of its subscribers while blaming others is simply abhorrent behavior from a previously trusted brand.
And terribly hypocritical.
The Netflix story should teach everyone even remotely interested in the Net Neutrality debate that there are entities in the Internet ecosystem, beyond ISPs, that have the ability and power to impact the future of an Open Internet.
I’d like to say I’m surprised but I’m not. When the FCC decided last year to regulate the Internet under Title II of the Communications Act, I wrote that this wasn’t the end of the fight. Although many supporters felt they had won a major victory, I pointed out that the rule was not going to be enough.
While ISPs are now required to treat all data equally, “edge providers” like Netflix do not need to abide by those same rules. So while Netflix argued that companies like Verizon were throttling its content, Netflix was lying to regulators, the press and consumers.