Netflix Slowed Down Its Videos On AT&T and Verizon's Wireless Networks

The movie streaming service provider has conceded that in the past  5 years  it used to slow down its videos on the Wireless networks of Verizon and AT&T to safeguard its users from fines

Netflix now believes that in the previous half a decade all discussion regarding net neutrality, it was intentionally slowing down its videos watched by users on the wireless networks of AT&T and Verizon. The streaming company did that for a good reason- to safeguard users from overage fines.

But it never spoke to users at a time when the streaming organization was claiming telecoms were generally intentionally slowing down its service to shield their own television businesses -a huge lie, it proved.

All this has brought well-deserved and considerable obloquy on CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings for playing his role in giving an invitation to extreme President Barak utility rule of the web. Others are also culpable. Google privately lobbied the White House administration but was quite scared to talk publically against utility rule.

But the Los Gatos based organization seems to have acted out of particularly venal and puerile motives. Netflix at that time was making efforts to politically pressurize to cut down favorable agreements to directly connect to last-mile operators such as Verizon and Comcast- a penny-ante consideration worth few million dollars at its best- for which the streaming company led to a significant public policy wrong-turn.

Currently, the immediate outcome is surprisingly and uniformly hot rhetoric from industry analysts and organizations who were the opponents of Netflix in the net-neutral discussion. The adjectives, since throttling was revealed, beginning with “hypocritical” and rapidly descend to the type of words, which are used by Donald Trump.

A who of who of serious free-market tech experts have beaten the organization. Policy chief of AT&T  Jim Cicconi proclaimed Ma Bell “outraged” to learn regarding the  slowing of video done by Netflix for its consumers without their approval.

What’s the issue if the streaming service provider has every right to slow its traffic? What leads to the aggravation of the well-informed, sarcastically, is how the company behaves to react to usage-capped charging of Verizon and AT&T is a best example of how the web must run, how many of its participants and users must be free to adapt to resolve problems?

The episode perfectly rebukes the rigid utility rule that the lobbying done by the streaming service provider helped the White House impose on the US broadband industry by putting pressure on the American communications regulatory body Federal Communications Commission.

Even Chairman of FCC, Tom Wheeler, while conceding to activists who are supporters of Obama, yet a chant that “competition, competition, competition” is the actual solution to every problem. At that time, Reed pushed the odd 1930s-ish perspective that the web of the future must be a single monopolistic wire into every house.