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."

Re:I Pay

[_xeno_]

Well, not just from Netflix, what they really want is to make the Netflix experience so terrible that you'd rather buy pay-per-view movies from Comcast instead. Barring that, they'll take money from Netflix if they can get that, too.

Comcast's end game is being your only source of content. Internet, TV, movies, music, phone service, all through Comcast and no one else. If they have to break Netflix and Skype to do that - "oops." After all, net neutrality is currently unenforceable in the United States.

VERIZON!

[itsenrique]

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.

Re:huh?

[Chas]

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.

Re:I Pay

[gfxguy]

It's not Neftlix wanting unlimited bandwidth access to Comcast's customers, it's Comcast's customers wanting what they actually paid for already. If Comcast has a problem with me using the service I already pay for to access Netflix, then their problem is with me, not Netflix. I'm the customer. I'm the one paying for bandwidth, and I'm the one choosing to use that bandwidth to access Netflix. I understand they argument they weren't throttling Netflix, that there were other problems, but I would think Comcast would actually want it's customers to be happy... that is, unless they had an effective monopoly on high speed internet service to their customers... which is exactly what they have with the majority of them.