14 DAY TRIAL // Netflix may have signed a deal with Verizon a couple of months ago to get access to the so-called “Internet fast lane,” but that doesn’t mean that anything has to change, apparently, since the service speeds have not increased at all.
In fact, not only has the speed not gone up, but it has actually slowed down, as the monthly ISP speed index reveals for June 2014.
Verizon FIOS has dropped two positions between May and June as the speed dropped to 1.58 Mbps from 1.9 Mbps. Back in April, Netflix signed a peering agreement with Verizon, which should have caused a spike in the speed, as it happened after the company signed a similar deal with Comcast back in February.
Immediately after Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for better speeds, the results could be seen in Netflix’s monthly ISP report. In that case, however, the two were working together on infrastructure changes for months before the contract was signed. Verizon and the streaming giant, on the other hand, have started testing out direct connection ports in June.
In order to point out that bad service wasn’t its fault, Netflix started displaying messages to users who were waiting for videos to buffer for too long, saying that the Verizon network was crowded. The ISP was so annoyed by this that it even sent Netflix a cease and desist letter threatening to take them to court unless it stops displaying error messages.
“There is no basis for Netflix to assert that issues with respect to playback of any particular video session are attributable solely to the Verizon network,” reads the letter that Netflix received.
For its part, the streaming service laughed it off and said it has no intention to stop displaying them and that the entire notification system was just being tested.
“The message you cite to in your letter merely lets our consumers know that the Verizon network is crowded. We have determined this by examining the difference between the speed at which the Verizon network handles Netflix traffic at peak versus non-peak times,” wrote Netflix’s legal team at the time.
In the meantime, Cablevision, Cox and Suddenlink continue to lead the index and have been showing steady improvements over the past three months.
To create the charts, Netflix takes into account data from over 48 million customers in the entire world, who view over 1 billion hours of TV shows and movies during the expanse of a month.