Verizon Tells Customer He Needs 75Mbps For Smoother Netflix Video

An anonymous reader writes: Verizon recently told a customer that upgrading his 50Mbps service to 75Mbps would result in smoother streaming of Netflix video. Of course, that's not true — Netflix streams at a rate of about 3.5 Mbps on average for Verizon's fiber service, so there's more than enough headroom either way. But this customer was an analyst for the online video industry, so he did some testing and snapped some screenshots for evidence. He fired up 10 concurrent streams of a Game of Thrones episode and found only 29Mbps of connection being used. This guy was savvy enough to see through Verizon's BS, but I'm sure there are millions of customers who wouldn't bat an eye at the statements they were making. The analyst "believes that the sales pitch he received is not just an isolated incident, since he got the same pitch from three sales reps over the phone and one online."

Comments

Re:Let's read the transcript exactly

[sjames]

No, since the correct answer is "Really 50Mbps is all you need. Going to 75 won't matter". Really, even 50 is WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY overkill for a 3Mbps stream.

In a just world, they'd let the people in jail for possession of pot go to make room for the lying pack of jackles that is sales and marketing. Although rarely enforced at all, it is actually against the law to lie to potential customers. Many times they get around it on technicalities or dismissing statements as mere puffery but this is just a straight up lie.

Re:uh...

[angel'o'sphere]

so Verizon is technically correct
No they are not.

For watching a video that needs something like 1.5 Mbps bandwidth, on a line that already has 50 Mbps increasing that to 75 makes no difference at all.