Netflix ranks broadband delivery
January 28, 2011
Cable operators — led by Charter Communications — delivered superior performance for the Netflix movie streaming compared with telcos over the last three and a half months, according to the video-rental company’s ranking of 16 US Internet service providers.
Netflix plans to publish the rankings monthly to shine a spotlight on which ISPs are capable of handling its HD streams — and which are lagging. The rankings are part of Netflix campaign to try andensure that it, or its content delivery network providers, are not required to pay additional fees to the last-mile ISPs in order to accommodate the significant influx of traffic its service represents.
“We think the cost sharing between Internet video suppliers and ISPs should be that we have to haul the bits to the various regional front-doors that the ISPs operate, and that they then carry the bits the last mile to the consumer who has requested them, with each side paying its own costs,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, wrote in a Jan. 26 letter to shareholders.