Verizon Slaps Netflix With Cease And Desist Letter

Well that escalated quickly. It would seem Netflix has touched a nerve.

Netflix has fired back, explaining that "This is about consumers not getting what they paid for from their broadband provider. We are trying to provide more transparency, just like we do with the ISP Speed Index, and Verizon is trying to shut down that discussion."

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Please Cease and Desist providing any and all accurate information to the consumer at any time. As we are "content providers", any "content" delivered over our pipes is subject to our express approval.

Exactly why Netflix shouldn't have given in to Comcast. Now they can be extorted by all the ISPs.

Netflix apparently already has a deal with Verizon as well, didn't seem to make as big news as the Comcast deal.

Verizon, man up. Stop getting all butthurt.

Netflix is employing the same tactic as Verizon. Verizon lowered the speed for Netflix to make Netflix look bad, and now Netflix is giving their customers a message making Verizon look bad.

Karma is a bitch.

Ashbringer said:

Netflix is employing the same tactic as Verizon. Verizon lowered the speed for Netflix to make Netflix look bad, and now Netflix is giving their customers a message making Verizon look bad.

Karma is a bitch.

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That's not karma, it's simply stating the facts. Facts are a bitch!

Verizon...

on my PS3, there is a new app provided by Verizon. Redbox app, by Verizon.

"STOP TELLING OUR CUSTOMERS ITS OUR FAULT THEIR VIEWING EXPERIENCE IS SHIT AND NOT YOURS! THEY'LL DEMAND ACTUAL SERVICE!"

The best thing Netflix could do right now is explain exactly how they know it was a problem in the Verizon network specifically, and not on some backbone network in between.

If they can pin it down to a single specific router on Verizon's network, Verizon wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

Cecil said:

Exactly why Netflix shouldn't have given in to Comcast. Now they can be extorted by all the ISPs.

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Are you suggesting that Comcast would have let Netflix into its network centers for free?

Oh HF, how you misinform!

sir-gold said:

The best thing Netflix could do right now is explain exactly how they know it was a problem in the Verizon network specifically, and not on some backbone network in between.

If they can pin it down to a single specific router on Verizon's network, Verizon wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

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Verizon runs through hundreds of servers in hundreds of cities, and its not rocket science, to find out that Verizon is slowing netflix's traffic

This is bad. I don't believe Verizon one bit that they are not throttling the pipeline with regards to Netflix. Something needs to be done with these phone companies. They have become brazen and only care about the bottom line now.

pxc said:

Are you suggesting that Comcast would have let Netflix into its network centers for free?

Oh HF, how you misinform!

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What's wrong with expecting a service provider to maintain and upgrade their peering points when it is required, rather than letting them get choked off due to being several hundred percent over-capacity?

Ashbringer said:

Netflix is employing the same tactic as Verizon. Verizon lowered the speed for Netflix to make Netflix look bad, and now Netflix is giving their customers a message making Verizon look bad.

Karma is a bitch.

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Any evidence of Verizon throttling speed?

Chas said:

What's wrong with expecting a service provider to maintain and upgrade their peering points when it is required, rather than letting them get choked off due to being several hundred percent over-capacity?

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Nothing. In fact I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.

canna said:

Nothing. In fact I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.

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It goes both ways, doesn't it? If Level 3 (Netflix's provider) doesn't have a good enough peering deal with Verizon, due to traffic from one of their customers aren't they just as responsible.

Interestingly, This is a bit different from the recent Comcast stuff too. Comcast is a Tier 2 provider, while Verizon is a Tier 1 provider.

One can argue who should spend the money, and that is a good debate to have. Ultimately consumers are going to bare the cost of all this. If Netflix pays their customers will see an increase. If Verizon or Comcast pays Their customers will pay, including those that do not subscribe to Netflix. We will also face the possibility of highly metered rates.

The ISP contracts you sign (I'm sure, I don't read it, like everyone else) I'm sure cover them thoroughly for not providing what the "maximum" bandwith they sell to you is.

TwistedAegis said:

The ISP contracts you sign (I'm sure, I don't read it, like everyone else) I'm sure cover them thoroughly for not providing what the "maximum" bandwith they sell to you is.

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I realize that, but 4% of what they are offering you is so far off that it's essentially false advertising. Its not like you are subscribed to 50 Mbps best effort and getting 45 Mbps. 1.75 Mbps of 50 Mbps isnt even close.

pxc said:

Are you suggesting that Comcast would have let Netflix into its network centers for free?

Oh HF, how you misinform!

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No, they wouldn't have to be on it to begin with, Comcast would just be forced to offer customers the service they paid for. What a concept!

Without net neutrality, 90% of our ISP costs are going to be going toward paying lawyers who draw up complicated peering deals.

Dear Verizon,

You are shit.

-The Internet

*sigh* I wish someone else here offered fiber that wasn't cox.....

Google Fiber where are you?

canna said:

I realize that, but 4% of what they are offering you is so far off that it's essentially false advertising. Its not like you are subscribed to 50 Mbps best effort and getting 45 Mbps. 1.75 Mbps of 50 Mbps isnt even close.

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True if you could some how prove that it is in fact Verizon's end that is throttling that particular provider and it not be a problem on the end of Netflix, I mean streaming to a thousands of customers on any particular node/cloud the movie is coming from could adversely affect that as well.

That said, way back in the day of my AT&T DSL the contract specifically says the speed guarantees (I think 384k was the guarantee on a 1.5M line) only is from your house to the their doorstop i.e. doesn't guarantee any speeds outside. Well I recall they had a usenet server that at the time was pretty damn nifty (free for customers), and one day bam.. there was a hard cap of 128Kbps on it. Users were absolutely outraged, even citing the guarantee because this is AT&T's server, they turned around and said it was outside in the internet so did not apply. Also said the reason for the cap on the speed was because users of that made up the top 2% of all users, basically a pile of bullshit so large all the migrant workers in this country couldn't shovel it away. Funny how it's always top 2% too, like that's their magic number that is the defacto response as to why they're screwing you.

canna said:

Nothing. In fact I think that the effected consumers of Verizon FIOS should sue Verizon.

It all boils down to what Verizon is selling their customers. FIOS is sold as an Internet service, not an Intranet service. Meaning, they are selling you a connection speed between networks. Verizon will likely say bullshit like "your speeds to our network are fine". That's great since speeds to your network are part of and Internet service, the other part is the speeds between Verizon's exit connections. If you're selling an Internet service, you need to deliver on both.

Say you are subscribed to the 50/25 Mbps tier, and you are only getting 1.75 Mbps, which is literally less than 4% of the speed you are paying for, when traversing to an external network (it doesn't matter which one or why), and Verizon is aware of the slowdown, and does nothing to improve it then they are pretty much guilty of false advertisement and intentionally defrauding the consumer. Since they are selling an Internet service, they need to do everything in their power to make sure their infrastructure delivers on what they are selling. If you are selling me a 50 Mbps connection between networks, then that's what you need to deliver.

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This + 1. Very well said.

Netflix will lose that game. At the end of the day, consumers want the shows at a good speed; they don't want to be in the middle of a pissing contest. Netflix has competitors in that market, whereas Verizon likely has no competitor in a given market.

Team Obi Juan said:

Netflix will lose that game. At the end of the day, consumers want the shows at a good speed; they don't want to be in the middle of a pissing contest. Netflix has competitors in that market, whereas Verizon likely has no competitor in a given market.

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Maybe, but not likely. Netflix does have brand recognition at this point and Net Neutrality is gaining steam. Amazon and Hulu will eventually run into some of the same issues Netflix is dealing with as well. Also, as I see it, the video database of the 3 major streaming services (Amazon, Netflix and Hulu) are different right now. For $7.99, or $8.25 (Amazon Prime's $99/yr broken out monthly) how hard is it to keep both? People are subscribing to Spotify for $10 a month, which isn't near the entertainment that TV is. Frankly, it's in Amazon's, Hulu's and all other 3rd party vendors to get behind Netflix's stand b/c it will directly affect them too. I'm not so sure Verizon will win this war - maybe the battle - but not the war. It's gaining notoriety and people won't appreciate how ISP's are wanting to double dip once they learn how it works.

Fuck Verizon, Fuck Comcast. Their executives are traitors and should be summarily executed.

I still don't understand why US citizens live with such a pile of bullshit. Why there is no anti-trust case? Its clear as a day that the net business in the US is a huge and utter monopoly (or oligopoly, which is the same). And It surprises me that in the "land of the freedom" and "capitalism" you tolerate such level of corporativism.

And its not that there aren't any lobbies.... its that this one is a particular PITA.

I read somewhere that 96% of the US citizens only get access to...2, AT MOST, different internet companies?!?!?!?!?!

prava said:

I still don't understand why US citizens live with such a pile of bullshit. Why there is no anti-trust case? Its clear as a day that the net business in the US is a huge and utter monopoly (or oligopoly, which is the same). And It surprises me that in the "land of the freedom" and "capitalism" you tolerate such level of corporativism.

And its not that there aren't any lobbies.... its that this one is a particular PITA.

I read somewhere that 96% of the US citizens only get access to...2, AT MOST, different internet companies?!?!?!?!?!

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Completely true, and not just for people living in the boonies. I live in Los Angeles and my ONLY 2 choices are Time Warner cable or extremely shitty Verizon DSL.

It all depends on the network to which you connect. The Internet I pay for promises and consistently delivers an average of 50Mb/s (both directions.) On a good day can get upwards of 100Mb/s if I connect to a network capable of delivering that performance (I've gotten as high as an 11MB/s download speeds from Steam; but my Steam average is ~6MB/s down.) A couple of scenarios:

1) I can connect to a Creative Labs (used merely as an example) server in Taiwan and sometimes strain to get even 100k/s down...(everyone knows of some url just like this!)

2)As mentioned, I can connect to a Steam server in the US and on a good day get ~11MB/s down (BYTES.)

3)I can visit a Nexus game modding site and I'm capped by their servers at ~1MB/s down

...but in all three of those cases my ISP is delivering a consistent 50Mb/s + (emphasis on the +) Internet connectivity. The speed of all those other networks is beyond the capability of my ISP to manage because my ISP doesn't own them (obviously.) Unfortunately, though, some individuals will see an Intercontinental server connection limping along at 75k/s (like when downloading a file, for instance) and conclude that their ISP is severely throttling their Internet connection--when nothing of the sort is taking place--not even close to taking place. Many people erroneously believe that some kind of "network neutral" legislation from Congress will "fix" that exact scenario (ie, miraculously bring all connected networks up to the same speed that my ISP connection delivers)--but it will in truth have no effect whatever on that situation.

Here's a NetFlix example that I think is telling. It's interesting because both the following examples are from my home and derived from the same Internet connection as described above (50Mb/s-100Mb/s.) (Bits) All connections are exclusively Ethernet wired (wireless is way too slow--run wireless at home and you are simply throttling yourself.) Both examples below use the *same* NetFlix account and the same ISP account.

1) If I watch a Netflix streaming movie on my 'puter, the very best quality I can get through my ISP is NetFlix HD quality w/stereo sound. It's fine, and for a long time I was very pleased with it--I use the highest-quality setting for the stream that Netflix offers, and my reception is perfect--no choking, no dropped frames, etc. Excellent.

2) However, if I use my Sony BDP-s5100 BluRay player to connect to the same local network my 'puters are on, which in turn connects to my single ISP account, and then to Netflix, the quality is much, much better! There are a couple of differences from the way my 'puters stream a Netflix movie, and my s5100 streams a Netflix movie, major differences.

a) The s5100 connects to Netflix through the Sony Entertainment Network, which is the network Sony has assembled for the exclusive use of its Sony-device customers, devices like my s5100. Unlike my standard PC ISP network, the Sony network *pays* what I imagine to be a not insignificant amount of money to stream Netflix in the official Netflix SuperHD streaming mode.

b)Unlike the normal Netflix HD/stereo mode my ISP provides, the Sony Network provides an UltraHD resolution mode for the video stream which has been supersampled/downsampled to 1080P, and provides 5.1 Dolby/DTS streaming sound with the stream. Discounting the far better audio result for a moment, the video result from the downsampled UltraHD movie resolution has really got to be seen to be appreciated! It produces a gorgeous picture that imo directly rivals that of BluRay disk playback. I'm completely sold on Netflix SuperHD--it is markedly superior to the normal NetflixHD and fully lives up to Netflix's claims about the quality.

So, the Sony Network is paying for the SuperHD Netflix streaming, but my ISP is actually delivering it to me because of my ~50Mb/s connection! When Netflix rolled this out some time ago, I remember reading that either the ISPs or the network owners would have to foot the bill to bring this quality of Netflix streaming to their customers. At the time I had no appreciation of how good it was going to be!

This is what I find so puzzling about these squabbles between Netflix and these ISPs (my backbone ISP is Cogent, not Comcast or Verizon, which is probably why my service is so exceptional--that, and we have fiber up to the building and actually running *inside* the apartment building to every floor.) But NetFlix's services are one reason why people sign up with ISPs like Comcast and Verizon in the first place; and on the flip side, ISPs like Comcast and Verizon provide NetFlix's customer base. Therefore, it is in the best long & short-term financial interests of these ISPs to provide the best connection to the NetFlix network that they can afford to provide! Netflix should not have to "pay extra" for these ISPs to do that--and remember, we are not talking about SuperHD quality here--just normal HD streaming quality from Netflix. I think that until customers en masse start demanding much better from their ISPs they aren't going to get it, and one reason the demand isn't more stringent and acrimonious is because most people really don't have a concrete idea of just how superior a service like Netflix SuperHD actually is when compared with Netflix HD.

griffinhart said:

It goes both ways, doesn't it? If Level 3 (Netflix's provider) doesn't have a good enough peering deal with Verizon, due to traffic from one of their customers aren't they just as responsible.

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No. Because the traffic isn't requesting itself. And Level3 isn't pushing into Verizon's network when there's no demand. All of the traffic is being requested on Verizon's end, BY VERIZON'S CUSTOMERS.

And do you think a backhaul provider like Level3 wouldn't LOVE to have a fatter interconnect deal with Verizon?

prava said:

I still don't understand why US citizens live with such a pile of bullshit. Why there is no anti-trust case? Its clear as a day that the net business in the US is a huge and utter monopoly (or oligopoly, which is the same). And It surprises me that in the "land of the freedom" and "capitalism" you tolerate such level of corporativism.

And its not that there aren't any lobbies.... its that this one is a particular PITA.

I read somewhere that 96% of the US citizens only get access to...2, AT MOST, different internet companies?!?!?!?!?!

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Our bought and paid for politicians won't allow it. As long as American Idol and Dancing with the Stars airs without issue, the majority won't care.