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Verizon Accused of Throttling Netflix and YouTube, Admits To 'Video Optimization' (arstechnica.com)
New submitter dgatwood writes: According to an Ars Technica article, Verizon recently began experimenting with throttling of video traffic. The remarkable part of this story is not that a wireless ISP would throttle video traffic, but rather that Verizon's own Go90 video platform is also affected by the throttling. From the article, "Verizon Wireless customers this week noticed that Netflix's speed test tool appears to be capped at 10Mbps, raising fears that the carrier is throttling video streaming on its mobile network. When contacted by Ars this morning, Verizon acknowledged using a new video optimization system but said it is part of a temporary test and that it did not affect the actual quality of video. The video optimization appears to apply both to unlimited and limited mobile plans. But some YouTube users are reporting degraded video, saying that using a VPN service can bypass the Verizon throttling."
If even Verizon can get on board with throttling sans paid prioritization, why is Comcast so scared of the new laws that are about to go into effect banning it?
If even Verizon can get on board with throttling sans paid prioritization, why is Comcast so scared of the new laws that are about to go into effect banning it?
Look, I'm as pro-net-neutrality as the next guy, but when you have people with the attention span of a gnat loading video after video in UHD on a shared wireless link just to lose interest after 20 seconds (after half the video has loaded), it probably makes a lot of sense from a network management standpoint to limit the videos to 10Mbps. T-Mobile limits most of their video to 1.5Mbps, but since they're the tech fanboy sweetheart no one bats an eye at that!
Note that I don't disagree with T-Mobile's approach, either. But ho-lee-fuck is Verizon getting a lot of shit for quietly limiting video to 7 times T-Mobile's video data rate. I'm sure that everyone can get along just fine only watching their mobile video in 1080p on their 5" screen. And before someone chimes in with "what about the rurrral users who can only get cellular data", then I guess a trade off to living in the country is you only get 1080p video from Netflix. Poor babies.
Sure, this could be a slippery slope to silencing dissenting speech on the internet. I get it. But until CNN, MSNBC (or Infowars or Breitbart) are being blackholed, I'll pass on this stupid battle. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.