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Netflix Gets What It Pays For: Comcast Streaming Speeds Skyrocket
jfruh (300774) writes "Back in February, after a lengthy dispute, Netflix agreed to pay Comcast for network access after being dogged by complaints of slow speeds from Comcast subscribers. Two months later, it appears that Comcast has delivered on its promises, jumping up six places in Netflix's ISP speed rankings. The question of whether this is good news for anyone but Comcast is still open."
Fuck Comcast
1. I Pay Comcast for internet access at X speed.
2. I Pay Netflix to send me movies via that line that I pay for.
3. Comcast holds my content hostage, wanting an extortion payment from NetFlix.
I see.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I hope we at least have water neutrality where we don't get charged more for using water for showering as opposed to washing the car. thats where its all going folks.
They would have offered to play netflix streaming server mirrors in their regional Headends to give real speed boosts.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
it's barely been a month & comcast's already completed all those network upgrades? you know, all that capital investment that was required b/c of netflix that they didn't have the $ for until a month ago? that's impressively fast considering how long it takes them to fix the most basic problems for individual customers!
Obviously Netflix will just pass the cost on to its subscribers (where else would they get the money from?). It's very unlikely they'd implement this as a surcharge for their Comcast subscribers only (I wish they would, but I expect their contract with Comcast prohibits it), they'll just absorb it into the single subscription price. So in fact non-Comcast customers will effectively be indirectly paying Comcast to subsidise other users' access.
From an engineer's point of view it's all baffling (Netflix and their customers are both paying for a certain amount of bandwidth, so where's the need for anything more?), but when you view it through the lens of capitalist incentives it all makes perfect sense.
"...for anyone but Comcast is still open."
It was never a question, nor open. The answer is no. It is painfully obvious this benefits Comcast and hurts everyone else.
What about the folks who prefer Hulu? What about the next great Internet service that now can never happen again like it did in the past? Netflix paying Comcast is not just about gaining access to customers. It's about locking out competition.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Sums it up nicely.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This is ground zero for the net neutrality fight. We need strong Net Neutrality to keep this BS from happening. Comcast is gaining a position where it will implicitly own a share of every company delivering service to its customers. The Comcast and TWC merger is going to make things infinitely worse.
What Netflix is paying for, is a bribery fee so that Comcast quit throttling them. The proof?
As soon as the agreement was reached, I could finally stream Netflix in 3D. Oh, and we all know they didn't get their peering equipment in within 3 days....
Capitalism, american capitalism, basically encourages this twisted practice of squeezing as much cash by hook or by crook out of anyone even remotely related to your service. Looking to companies to solve the problem is like looking at a cigarette lighter to fix your burning house.
br. America has no recourse for evil companies, in fact it prides itself on this fact.
Good people go to bed earlier.
So Netflix ponies up the money & Comcrap is able to provide no-stutter streaming. It appears to be true. At my girlfriend's place (Comcrap) we couldn't watch Netflix but now it runs fine. At my house (Uverse... Uvile?) we could watch Netflix but now, as in the last two nights, it stutters & is unwatchable. Purely anecdotal but yea, they both suck. Maybe I change providers again... back to Wide Open West!!
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
I'm in Tampa, and my service for Netflix has gone down slowly but surely for many months. At this point during peak access it shows me video that looks akin to 240p YouTube clips. Fingers crossed that these clowns overstep their bounds and force some net neutrality legislation.
One. Nobody "prefers Hulu". Except the people who implemented it but don't actually USE it.
Look at Hulu. It's a mediocre streaming site with ever larger chunks of intrusive video ads. And paying them doesn't make the damn things go away or space them out further or make them shorter ads. That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
NO THANK YOU!
I mostly agree with your sentiments about it being bad that Comcast got paid for content their users REQUESTED and were already paying them to deliver.
Not entirely sure about lock-out though.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We don't know what NotDrWho meant to post. His access to Slashdot is through Comcast.
The ads, or how bad Hulu is, is completely unrelated to the topic WaywardGeek was bringing up.
I assume they meant to ask, what happens with Netflix 2, when there is some new streaming service that's even BETTER than Netflix in every way. Will they also have to go through the same growing pains, eventually forking over cash to get access to the "full internet"?
If you have a company and pay for Internet connectivity, then you already paying what is necessary for that volume of data. The speed should be the same for everyone. Otherwise new businesses cannot form on the net on equal terms. This is important for freedom and even for the market economy. However, without net neutrality will end up in a time of monopoly (or oligopoly). Only this time the monopoly is not governed by the state and at least in theory controlled by the public.
For the US, dropping net neutrality makes sense from a corporate state viewpoint, as all big Internet services are US-based (beside those in China). If you hinder any other new service you can guarantee that those corporations stay in business, because the ramp up cost for new players would be too high. Also peer-to-peer technologies which could flourish with IPv6 can be crippled right before they become dangerous for the establishment.
It would be a shame if ... something ... happened to that nice video streaming business you got there.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
I'm beginning to wonder if Netflix did this on purpose, to gain sympathy and to highlight the actual problems around net-neutrality.
It makes sense, instead of making bold claims about what might happen, they went ahead and just let it happen..
It's sort of like a person going into a bad neighborhood, getting roughed up and then telling everyone about how much of a bad part of town that was, look he's even a victim!
This chart is easy to show to politicians and policymakers, and it exposes the simple fact that Comcast clearly **had** the capacity before these payments, they were just withholding.
Personally, I think it's a very smart move on Netflix's part, they are playing the long game.
You have basically everything backwards here.
Netflix is not the comcast customer. Netflix pays their own ISP for their bandwidth already.
It's not Netflix which is using all this bandwidth on comcasts network - it's comcast customers who are using it. And they already paid for it.
Comcast wants to bill twice. I am sure they would bill 20 times if they could get away with it.
And they are the 800lb gorilla with an effective monopoly position in many markets and no scruples whatsoever. Netflix folded to extortion, and the precedent is certainly not one that will benefit any users, unless it's the users that are also comcast stock owners.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
That's how the entertainment industry would LIKE people to consume their media. Paying them directly, then supporting them indirectly through ad revenue as well.
So, in other words, exactly like a cable subscription.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Once upon a time, cable TV did not have ads, either. One day we will look back fondly at a Netflix (subsidiary of Comcast) without ads.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
No, what you're seeing is fewer ads, but longer overall.
Take an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode.
43 minutes of show.
Plus 6 (count 'em) 2-3 minute commercial breaks when you see four ads back to back.
Granted, that's only about 28% (when TV is 36%). Still, for someone paying the monthly fee, that's ridiculous.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
> watch a few hours of commercials every week, and maybe a few hours of actual show.
If you're ratio of commercial:content on basic cable is anywhere close to 1:1, then you're doing it wrong. Even if you don't use a DVR, the actual ratio on the vast majority of networks is 1:2, or about 18-20 minutes of ads and 40-42 minutes of show every hour.
> Every single time I surf the menu and see something that looks appealing, and change the channel, it's right to 5 minutes of commercials.
That's because you surf away from channel A during the commercials, so of course there are going to be commercials on the other channel. The breaks are all coordinated. It's the same with terrestrial radio. Occasionally there is a network that offsets it's programming by 5 minutes (I think TBS did this for a long time), but those usually don't last long, and revert to the standard of starting on the hour with breaks on the 10s.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
The thing is, I don't give a crap how much it costs to support streaming.
If you want to give it away, ad-supported, for "free"? Cool!
But if I'm going to pay a subscription fee, I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with ads on top of that. And if the sub price doesn't cover what it'd cost to go ad-free, then they need to rethink their pricing and delivery scheme.
In short "I don't want to see ads. PERIOD!"
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's worse, to some degree.
With cable TV, the providers only have limited information about who is watching. With streaming video, they can gather much more demographic information, which they can either use themselves or resell to "business partners". It's yet another form of income for them. So Hulu (and similar services) are triple-dipping; they charge the viewer cash for the privilege of watching, then get paid for the adverts, then resell the collected demographics. The viewer pays in money, time, and privacy.
We won't forget this.
Haha, that's what everyone said about the separating of DVD and streaming services, which was an effective price hike.
But in all seriousness, there was nothing special about the deal, it was a peering agreement, which is STANDARD procedure for EVERYONE. This has absolutely NOTHING to do with Net Neutrality. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea how the system works and has worked since the Internet originally went commercial. Not... One... Clue... This is how the Internet as most everyone knows it has always, always, worked.
For those who can't grasp this concept, here's an easy reference article: http://blog.streamingmedia.com...
I8-D
What Netflix is paying for is "a peering tie-in inside of Comcast's data centers".
You can call 'protection money' whatever you want. It's still Extortion.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.