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From CNET:
Angry Netflix customers are a force to be reckoned with, and they're the ones owed an explanation about why the company would slow the transmission of video streams to some wireless customers without informing them.
Netflix found itself in the hot seat after admitting, in a Wall Street Journal story Thursday, that for five years it had been tamping down service to Verizon and AT&T customers. What's more, the Los Gatos, California, company said the policy excluded customers of T-Mobile and Sprint.
Critics immediately cried foul on Netflix, seeing hypocrisy on the part of a company that two years ago led a fight to require the Federal Communications Commission to adopt "strong" Net neutrality rules that would ban Internet service providers from slowing traffic under almost any circumstances. Netflix also wanted the FCC to require operators to be more transparent in how they manage their networks.
But the most galling aspect may be that Netflix never notified its customers that it was imposing a slowdown.
"There is nothing wrong with what Netflix is doing," said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a group that has opposed the FCC's Net neutrality regulations. "Except for not making it public."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday March 29 2016, @07:34PM
Netflix made decisions. Period. They decided to lower the data rate to some customers for whatever reason. Perhaps they did it to avoid those customers hitting the cap, getting billed for the overage and complaining to Netflix. Perhaps it was some dark plot with AT&T and Verizon. Doesn't matter. Tech decisions being made by the tech people are generally the right way to solve these sort of problems. If they can easily expose a control to let the customer opt to use more bandwidth and Netflix is OK with pushing more bits, something they apparently are since they do for everyone else, then why not. But if they have some sort of arrangement with AT&T and Verizon, like a free colo, and they don't want that and have come to a different understanding with Netflix then that is ok too. Customers can vote with their wallet and sign up for Amazon or Hulu. Let the market work these things out.
Your cable company makes the same sort of decisions. The feeds they take from the dish are big beautiful streams that they decide how much to recompress to fit the channels they want to deliver into the bandwidth they have available. A few providers (ESPN, HBO, etc) stipulate minimums, most don't. They don't disclose any of those decisions and I certainly wouldn't want the government wading into it. Explain the difference here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday March 29 2016, @07:39PM
Yeah, it really doesn't seem that big a deal if i'm understanding correctly
So they defaulted a user setting to lower than normal? Quite a bit different than net neutrality issues!
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday March 29 2016, @07:56PM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2016, @12:14PM
The problem is that if 2 customers are paying the same rate for a service, they should receive the same service.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:21PM
Netflix made decisions. Period. They decided to lower the data rate to some customers for whatever reason.
Agreed, and in this case it was a decision Netflix made with relation to direct customers. That's a bit different than some tangentially-involved third party making the decision for both of them.